reading list

Two recent recommendations from Boing Boing science blogger Maggie Koerth-Baker have caught my attention:

Paleofuture Magazine has a new (print) issue out about "past visions of future food."

And Sera Young has written Craving Earth: Understanding Pica--the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk.

feeding objects

I don't know why I find this website compelling, but, it really, weirdly, is. How decadent to have an extra piece of cheese for your cell phone (maybe my favorite picture there), and intriguing that we might relate to objects in terms of feeding.

http://feedingobjects.com/

(via boingboing)

The site also links to the hunger project, suggesting that feeding objects is somehow connected to human hunger.

following my stuff to santa fe

I decided to go to Santa Fe. Realistically, I will only be there for my panel and maybe one other panel/Donna Haraway's talk. But, how often do I have two things to present in one conference? I should be there.

So, see you at La Fonda on Friday, I hope.

Details here.

new plumpiñon bags

I'm sending some plumpiñon to an event in santa fe (multispecies salon at the society for cultural anthropology annual meeting), and am liking the new style of bag:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22485412@N05/sets/72157623808264065/

RISD's Waste for Life work with plastic bags

I'm impressed & inspired by work being done at RISD with their "Kingston Press": "a 'hot-press' to bond the paper and plastic together."


http://www.flickr.com/photos/46334730@N07/
http://risdwasteforlife.wordpress.com/

The plastic looks so much more solid, glossy, and sturdy than what I've been making at home with my iron.

I especially love the bracelets.

chewing on santa fe

Starvation Seeds will be in Santa Fe in May. I'm not sure exactly when yet, but people attending the Society for Cultural Anthropology conference will be contributing a variety of edibles under the banner of a "multispecies meal." Look for my name and for Eben Kirksey, organizer, & see the call for the posted last week.

I'm not sure what I'll make yet. Liquid tamales were very popular at my tasting, but I feel obliged to work with piñon nuts, given our Santa Fe location. Piñon nuts won't be in season then, so I might have to bring some back-up nuts. (Trader Joes imports theirs and offers three or four possible origin locations, I forget where. Here in Australia they mostly come from China, and are almost as expensive as buying "native" seeds in New Mexico.) If anyone has a stash of piñon you're willing to contribute, please let me know. I'll probably end up flying via Albuquerque, as I have to leave directly for London after SCA.

I wonder if Plumpy'nut is on the ground in Haiti. I hope so; mud cookie research indicated that Haitian kids could use some protein even before the earthquake.

Piling up…

I spent a lot of time last spring contemplating the Haitian practice of making, selling, and eating cookies made from mud. Mud cookies make many things clear: Haiti has severe ecological and economic problems. Haitians find the process of harvesting, cultivating, and eating clay compelling enough to develop economies and labor systems to support the industry. I don't have enough knowledge of the situation in Haiti to assert that the mud cookie phenomenon might be related to Haiti's revolutionary tradition and their desire to remain outside of colonial systems, but, I pondered this and other questions. (For a thoughtful, if character-limited, analysis of Haiti's revolution and colonial politics/politics of slavery, see my colleague Greg Caldwell's recent facebook posts on the subject.) I hope that the current climate in Haiti after the earthquake (US control of their airport, apparent US control of the relief effort, Haiti's predicament regarding aid from many countries, few of which have active, viable revolutionary politics) will acquire &/or maintain an attitude of revolutionary solidarity. This is an impossible hope, I'm afraid, but...I hope anyway.

Footage from Port au Prince reminds me again that my grandfather has died. A teacher in high school theorized the process of grieving for the many deaths experienced in any life as "a pile of bodies." Each new death adds to the pile, and it gets bigger, there, in the corner of my mind that takes care of death and dying. Haiti truly has piles. Grandparents and grandchildren and parents and children are piled up, buried alive, buried dead, buried anonymously, buried having been archived by digital cameras, their clothes having been snipped at for identification, or not. I am so grateful for my grandfather's grave, and even for the elaborate coffin and embalming process that I found unnecessary at the time. Why not keep a body safe, if you can?

I gave my grandfather's eulogy. I didn't ask to or especially want to, but I was happy to. He did talk with me a lot, maybe because I'm comfortable with silences and could outlast his own comfort with silence. My cousin Gina offered her adaptation of our grandmother's spaghetti sauce, one of Grandpa's favorites, over on her blog, Gluten-Free Gourmand. And I've decided to post my eulogy here. Grandpa was a huge part of my process with this project, and I'll remember him every time I return to it. He made many valiant efforts to be an internet user; we even got my grandma an e-mail address at the peak of this activity (her handle was oldladykelley). He would surely get a kick out of knowing he lives online, alongside recipes for spaghetti sauce and ruminations about death and eating mud.