Awesome video interlude

This video from the New York Times makes my point about say-nothing convention speeches almost too well. Just watch.

The SNAP Experience

This week, I'm participating in the third-annual Arizona Community Action Association SNAP Experience. (See their blog HERE.) This means I'll be consuming only the food I was able to buy with the average weekly SNAP (a.k.a. "food stamps") benefit in Washington, D.C. -- $33. (That's right! SNAP participants in D.C. receive, on average, less than $33 per person, per week for food.) The point of this exercise is to raise awareness around (1) how little the program provides, (2) how difficult it is to buy healthy foods on such a limited budget, and (3) how important the program is to families and the communities they live in.

After a stressful trip to Giant in Columbia Heights and a $10 taxi ride home (the store is far from my house, and my haul was too heavy to carry on the bus), here's what I have to choose from this week:

1 half-gallon skim milk - $1.69
1 box cereal - $1.00
1 jug 100% apple juice - $2.00
1 loaf wheat bread - $2.00
1 jar peanut butter - $2.99
4 yogurt cups - $2.29
7 bananas - $2.35
2 jars pasta sauce - $3.00
1 box whole wheat linguine - $1.49
2 frozen cod filets - $3.49
1 lb. green beans $1.93
2 bags romaine lettuce - $2.99
4 tomatos - $1.99
1 single-serving frozen pizza - $0.88 (splurge #1)
1 box sugar-free Popsicles - $1.49 (splurge #2)

TOTAL - $31.34

Look out for a status update later this week!

Party in the U.S.A.

2012 Democratic National Convention by stevebott / flickr.com

Wait...are the Olympics back on TV? For the last two weeks, TV and online media have been dominated by panoramic sweeps of packed arenas, hero-worship of American sweethearts, personal tales of trial and triumph, and unending news commentary about missteps and upsets, all to the soundtrack of the standing ovation. No doubt about it. If you hibernated from early August to early September, you'd think we're still in London.

It's not new, but political conventions are feeling strangely like rallies for America, writ large, and not earnest attempts to talk about the things politicians claim to care and know most about--policy issues. David Brooks wrote in the New York Times that he was disappointed that Obama's acceptance speech didn't contain much substance. I agree, and by my own estimation, neither did any of the others at either convention. Even FLOTUS Michelle Obama's speech, which was expertly delivered and moving, didn't touch on her own biggest policy priority--growing healthier kids.

The question is not are convention speeches substantive, but why aren't the substantive.

There are lots of reasons, but I think the most important is politicians' estimation of their audience. Convention speeches aren't substantive because lots of people watch them. The Republican National Convention attracted 30.3 million viewers on its final night. Nielsen hasn't posted the viewership for the final night of the Democratic convention, but I'd guess it will be even higher, as the Democrats attracted more viewers on nights one and two than the GOP in their first two nights. I haven't found a good estimate of how many Republicans watched the Democratic convention and vice versa, but in 2008, half of convention viewers watched both. If that holds true for 2012, that means about 15 million people watched the Democrats, 15 million watched the Republicans, and 30 million tuned into both. In all, 60 million Americans are engaged at some level with the conventions, which is about 20 percent of the American population. Put simply, there is no other opportunity in a candidate's campaign to address a larger or more diverse crowd.

The message, then, has to speak relatively well to all viewers, and especially well to those who agree (read: likely voters for party X) or might agree (read: independents) if given a little inspiration. Nothing works better for energizing a base and bringing over a few stragglers than touting Americans' enterprising spirit, the importance of maintaining/restoring the American Dream, and the debt we owe to veterans. Flag-waving, "God bless America"-ing, and multi-colored confetti don't hurt either. Extensive plans to reform tax law, campaign finance, or entitlement spending, to name a few looming issues, don't play well for a national audience.

The problem is that my party affiliation is not my religion. I am perhaps inspired, but not swayed, by tent revivals and promises of on-the-spot miracles. Voters yearn for speeches that educate them on the issues, honestly lay out policy differences between the camps, and assume that they read or watch a little news. My voting is not faith-based--it's an intellectual calculus--and I don't think I'm alone. Fictional President Bartlet on The West Wing asked several times throughout the series when politicans began assuming voters were so stupid. I wonder the same thing now. I wish the conventions catered better to our collective decision-making process, and less to our supposed interest in shiny things.

According to the American National Election Study, 10% to 29% of voters make up their minds during the conventions. This is a actually a pretty impressive proportion of people. Let's give them all a chance to base their decisions on the issues, and not on hair-dos and high-flying rhetoric. I think we're all smarter than that.

To party leadership, network execs, and electeds across the country: Please leave the fireworks and all-consuming patriotism for July 4th. Here's to convention speeches worthy of a thoughtful, discerning America.

Can the Clean Plate Club Save the World?

Clean plates by iampease / flickr.com

The first line in a recent Washington Post article begins this way:

"Americans throw away up to 40 percent of their food every year, cramming landfills with at least $165 billion worth of produce and meats..."

That's outrageous! That's like buying lunch every day of the workweek and then tossing two of those lunches in the trash. If you did this every week, all year round, you'd buy 260 lunches and throw 104 of them away. If you spent even $5 on those lunches, you'd burn $520, on top of the labor and environmental costs of choking America's landfills.

But the author doesn't stop there. She goes on to lament that all this food waste happens, "at a time when hundreds of millions of people suffer from chronic hunger globally."

Now I get the rhetorical appeal of this point, but I have to admit I'm rolling my eyes.

It sounds a bit like your mom pleading with you to finish your now-cold fish sticks and overcooked green peas because, hey, don't you know there are kids starving in Africa? My unvoiced response to that line of argument was always, "and will you be the one to lovingly Saran wrap my half-masticated microwave dinner and UPS it to Niger?"

As an adult, my rebuttal now has less to do with logistics, and more to do with upsetting local markets, preventing local problem-solving, and choking--not American landfills, but now--foreign countries with food its inhabitants are unused to cooking and eating. (To be clear: in cases of natural disaster or acute famine, feeding desparately undernourished people clearly warrants those costs to the local ecnomy and culture. But in cases of chronic famine, I would argue, it's less clear cut.)

Rather, authors who write about domestic food waste should talk about domestic hunger. What if your mom instead admonished you: "Hey! Eat those fish sticks and peas. There are kids in your class at school who won't have supper tonight." This argument stands up much better to five- (or twenty-five-) year-old scrutiny.

First, it's probably true. In 2010, the latest year for which national government data is available, 14.5 percent of American households didn't have enough food at all times for an active, healthy life. In government jargon, one in seven housoeholds was food insecure. (The Food Research and Action Center, which measures whether a family can afford enough food, said it was closer to one in six people. [PDF])

Though children are less likely to suffer from food insecurity than their parents (parents are often kind enough to shield their kids from hunger by eating less and giving their kids more), there were still 16 million hungry kids in the United States in 2010. Many of them receive free and reduced-price meals in schools, but schools rarely provides snacks and dinners. Backpack programs and food pantries can help, but the 2010 statistics reflect food insecurity even with those vital resources taken into account.

Second, this line of reasoning makes much more sense. The implication of "finish what's in front of you, or else..." is that the "or else" could both (1) realistically take place and (2) actually help. In fact, you could easily cook a big lasagna and donate it to a local food pantry. Kitchens have different rules, but it's worth a call to your local soup kitchen or food pantry to see what's most useful to them. (From experience working in a kitchen, I can assure you that your uneaten birthday cake is less helpful than a big bag of apples, but most kitchens will take and use well what you bring them.)

And, again, this might actually help your neighbors. Unlike donating food en masse in a foreign country with its own agricultural market, your hungry neighbors depend on domestically-grown food. And though food pantries, which annually give away thousands of boxes or bags of nonperishables, can admittedly make more out of your money than your canned goods, it's still worthwhile to give your unused (but still usable) food to these important community organizations. And now, it's not just an empty threat but an actionable step.

In fact, what if we reconfigured those handy iPhone calorie counting apps, into number-crunching food waste motivators? Rather than counting what you put on your plate, why not regularly calculate the cost of what you push off it into the garbage disposal? The Green Egg Shopper is an early attempt at this, but it doesn't do enough.

The very real hunger in Niger has little to do with your kid's greens, and it's disingenous to claim it does. A family serious about finishing the fish sticks for social justice reasons would calculate what it wastes and give at least as much in money, food, or labor to the local pantry or soup kitchen.

Let's stop threatning to do something about hunger and create a Clean Plate Club that really works.

Quinoa Salad

I've made a protein-packed quinoa salad for a few recent pot-luck dinners. Even people who can't pronounce quinoa and are a bit skeptical of its rice-meets-couscous-like texture really enjoyed it. (And of course my tofu-pressing, kale-munching, vegan-cupcake-eating friends loved it, too). The basic idea is to cook the quinoa in vegetable broth (throw the raisins in halfway through to plumpen them up) and let it cool. On the side, mix together everything else. Combine and serve! Beware: this recipe makes a ton I would recommend halving the recipe.



12 ounces (2 cups, or 340 g) prewashed dry quinoa
5 cups (1.2 l) water or low-sodium vegetable broth
1 packed cup (165 g) raisins
1/4 cup (60 ml) apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup (60 ml) fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup (120 ml) olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons red pepper flakes, adjust to taste
1/4 cup chopped fresh green onions
2 large cloves garlic, peeled and minced
Pinch sea salt, adjust to taste
Cracked black pepper, adjust to taste, optional
Heaping 1/3 cup (50 g) salted roasted pepitas
4 large carrots, peeled and finely grated
One 15-ounce (425-g) can of red beans, drained and rinsed
One 15-ounce (425-g) can of black beans, drained and rinsed

Recipe and photo credit to Have Cake Will Travel.

The Mirage of Clean Politics

By Sean MacEntee / flickr.com

There's a new Facebook group on the loose, "100 Percent FED Up". Recent posts include a photo of FLOTUS in the arms of U.S. Olympic wrestler Elena Pirozhkova and the sarcastic caption, "OUR FIRST LADY REPRESENTING OUR GREAT NATION WITH CLASS AND INTEGRITY AT THE 2012 OLYMPICS!" Another is a meme admonishing food stamp recipients for owning iPhones. Still another questions the existence of Obama's birth certificate. (Are people STILL doing that?) And my favorite: side-by-side photos of Joe Biden and Herman Cain. Under Joe Biden's photo (labeled "Democrats" and--tongue-in-cheek--"Not Racist"), a caption reads: "Think Black people are incapable of achieving anything without the help of white people." Under Herman Cain's photo (labeled "Republicans" and "Racist"), the caption reads: "Think Black people can achieve anything they set their minds to without help from anyone." None of these is smart, or useful, or kind. Just to prove I'm equal opportunity, I will say that Change.org has also been guilty of some of the same counterproductivity, to coin a term.

Indeed, I am fed up, but not in the way this pseudo-political group implies. I am tired of political ads that are blatantly misleading. I am tired of personal attacks, which by definition reveal nothing useful about the leadership abilities or policy positions of their victims. They are wrought in back rooms by spin doctors and wielded haphazardly, as weapons. I am tired of the barrage of fundraising e-mails--even from a candidate I support--with pithy, curious subject lines. At least once a day they beg for my donation to add to an (at least partially) ill-used war chest. I am tired of watching my candidate wrestle in the proverbial muck, wasting his time and sullying his character. I am tired of disingenuous promises. I am tired of opportunistic photo ops. I am tired of all-too-transparent pandering. I am tired of oversimplification, of quotes stripped of their context, of slogans without the details. I am especially tired of mudslinging at the expense of marginalized groups--the LGBTQ community, people of color, and low-income moms, to name a few.

Is this really how we elect a president?

To be clear: I applaud get out the vote efforts that seek to engage underrepresented people. I am happy that some portion of my campaign donation goes to pay hardworking field organizers (and many of them are unpaid), thoughtful policy advisers, and the under-recognized staff who turn the gears, pour the coffee, advance the gigs, etc. I am even okay with the use of my donation to power an informative website, or print a campaign flyer, or stamp a button. I understand that campaigns are expensive, and I appreciate that being out-raised imperils your chances of success. What I hope we can eliminate in my lifetime is the resource-intensive part of this process that ashames and frustrates me--the part where we call each other dirty names.

It's time to clean up our elections. In 2016, the candidate who sticks to positive ads, sets achievable goals, and puts out substantive policy positions gets my vote. Period.

On American Presidents: A Journey through Books

Cover of Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

It's been far too long since I've written here. Job changes, the fun of summer, and a debilitating obsession with The West Wing, Mad Men, and Modern Family have kept me from my blog. But I'm now returning to begin progress toward a new goal--a presidential reading project. I plan to read one highly-acclaimed biography of every American president, in order. I will use my blog to post at least once in the course of reading each book to share a little-known fact, reflect on an important finding, or, in some cases, express surprise (and maybe a little disgust) at the heroism we posthumously impose on our most deeply flawed American leaders.

I was inspired to undertake this project after reading Candice Millard's absolutely excellent book Destiny of the Republic about the short-lived Garfield administration, and, more interesting, the tragic saga of his death. It is meticulously researched yet reads like a thriller. It turns out that Garfield was a fierce advocate for equal rights, yet his all-important presidential legacy is nil and his broader life story has been muted by his truncated time in the White House. From my reading of Millard's book, Garfield promised to be a far more admirable, if not influential, leader than the author of the Emancipation Proclamation himself. I feel robbed, having not heard this story til now. I have decided it's time to get educated.

I also feel my formal education--K through college--failed to really ignite a passion for history. As James Loewen has written in Lies My Teacher Told Me, many history teachers fail to appreciate the power of stories to teach history. Joshua Foer explained well in his brilliant book Moonwalking with Einstein how the memory requires context and imagination to absorb facts. The more memorable the context, the more easily we can recall the fact. (Foer says it's much easier to remember the word "baker" [the profession] than the last name Baker, because "baker" has a memorable context--the smell of bread, the taste of a fresh bagel, the starched aprons and white hats.) A list of presidents, important dates, or war battles does far less for long-term understanding than an engaging story which touches each of those data points and imbues them with meaning and emotion. I feel the historical names, dates, and places I was taught (to little effect) have been missing memorable linkages for a long time. I hope this project helps me understand our nation's history, reflect on the injustices that were committed to make the country, and recall names and dates--and the stories that make them important--more easily.

Wish me luck! My first two books are Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner and John Adams by David McCullough.

The (Green) Revolution Will Not Be Robotic

Or maybe it will. America's young farmers will decide.

Check out my new piece on Slate on the unraveling future of on-farm robotics...

Last July, Iowa-based Kinze Manufacturing gathered its dealers to debut a new on-farm toy: a John Deere tractor pulling a grain cart. The scene might have been unremarkable—dealers have seen the cart in action countless times—except that there was no one at the wheel.

The driverless tractor won admirers at NPR, Wired, and the Wall Street Journal. But Midwesterners saw Kinze’s system as a welcome but predictable upgrade in the über-mechanized world of commodity growing. For more than a decade, farmers have enjoyed the advances of precision agriculture. The highest-tech farm vehicles across the country now boast real-time kinematic GPS and auto-steer technology. Farmers are just along for the ride, accompanied by  Beyoncé videos.

There’s no doubt that big bots are the future of big ag. The question is whether autonomous technologies will ever penetrate the rest of the market—smaller-scale, diversified, labor-intensive operations popping up across the country.

As of the USDA’s 2007 census of agriculture, the average American grower is 57 years old. For every farmer under 35, there are nearly six who are 65 or older. The agriculture industry is poised for sudden, widespread employee turnover from the last generation to the next. These incoming growers, far more than the outgoing ones, will decide the fate of robotic farming. And from what we know of new farmers, two very different futures are possible. READ MORE...

Photo by Wheat initiative / flickr.com

Upcoming Event

In partnership with Slate magazine and Arizona State University, the New America Foundation is hosting an exciting event, entitled "Feeding the World While the Earth Cooks." Next Thursday, April 12, 2012, from 9:00 am - 3:15 pm we will explore how we will feed ourselves in 2050, when population growth, climate change, and shifts in diet will challenge the global food supply. Find more event details and an RSVP form here.

Why the Critics and the Evangelists Are Wrong About Church

This subject warrants a much longer post by me, but I want to write quickly that I'm so distraught by some of the things I read from conservative Christians, who love their churches, and also from those who grew up in those churches and have rejected them as adults. This post by Rachel Evans, popped up on my Facebook feed (I don't read her regularly), and I wanted to respond by telling her "thank you" for an honest, insightful response to her upbringing in a conservative Christian church, but also to say that this story does not paint a valid picture of the entire universe of organized religion in the United States.

I have attended several wonderful churches--particularly Methodist, Presbyterian (USA), United Church of Christ, and Unitarian congregations--that are doing all of the things most people say churches do wrong, right. They are inclusive. If you visited, you would see women on the choir risers and in the pulpit as salaried clergy. In fact, you would see people of color in those places, too. And gay and lesbian clergy. And a whole mix of folks sitting in the pews, next to one another, talking to one another, and interacting warmly and genuinely in the coffee hour after church, too. These churches are multi-generational, and all types of families show up on Sundays. Doubts and questions are expected, even encouraged. Perhaps these churches err on the side of assuming everyone is voting Democrat, but I've been to some that don't assume at all. From the pulpit, and in Bible studies, and in the impassioned conversations in women's groups (even youth groups!), talk about sin is almost exclusively about the ways people commit injustices against each other. There are plenty examples of that in the Bible. Sex is part of the conversation, sure, but it's about sexual violence, and misplaced societal value on sex, and sex as a means of subjugating certain people, not really about abstinence.

These churches believe deeply that every person (not just people in church) are works in progress, even that the Church and its doctrines are works in progress, too. People at my churches believed in evolution and also respect and study the Bible. "Community service" is an act of humbling ourselves before God, being accountable to the creation we nurture (and often destroy), and practicing an unconditional love and care for other people, as God loved us. It is often about collecting stories and sharing them with friends; breaking bread with people we might not have otherwise met at a dinner table. It is never about converting people or showing them why they are wrong to believe or live as they do. My churches make an active effort to avoid becoming a "country club" of the rich, white, and well-dressed, and instead aim to be just a meeting place, where we practice being members of the type of world we envision would bring about the most peace (in the broadest sense of the word).

I admit that these churches are rare. They take effort to seek out, but they exist, and they offer an organized, loving community whose reality and teachings run completely opposite to everything the un-churched or dislocated conservative Christians say is wrong with modern religion. I understand the need to rebel against institutions that oppress you and people you care about. I support that, in fact. But I wish those rejections didn't reinforce such a one-sided portrayal of who Christians are. I am progressive, and justice-seeking, and full of doubts, too. And going to church on Sundays edifies who I am at my core.