Why am I here?

I am here to read, to think, to write about the connections between healthy land, healthy food, and healthy life. It’s a broad theme. It has to be.

That’s the justification in a nutshell. For the whole meal deal, keep on reading.

The seminal reason for starting this blog is selfish and has to do with my high school social studies teacher, Mr. Scarlett. He had us write one-page reflections on almost every reading he assigned. Standard practice for students, but he claimed he did the same in his own life. Always attracted to record-keeping, I continued the practice outside the classroom and diligently wrote down something about almost every book I read. I wrote on lined paper, scrap paper, colored paper, and white paper, sometimes for several pages, sometimes just one line.

These pages are three-hole punched and sit quietly in a big black binder next to a big blue binder of financial records. Keeping a record of what I've read for its own sake seems increasingly pointless to me. I need to not simply absorb and document, but also read and reflect. This blog will help me to reflect.

Also pointless is relegating the thoughts and reactions I had to a static binder when I what I read nowadays feels so urgent. People don’t need to know what I thought about The Hours and Mrs. Dalloway, but I would like to tell them about Coming Home to Eat and the Heathy Food, Healthy Lives Institute. I want to share with others the complex and fascinating fields I'm picking my way through.

I am no longer focused on the corner of Nutrition. In fact, my love affair with the topic imploded earlier this semester. Our relationship was tested when I began making reluctant friends with the Food System. Things came to a head during a Human Nutrition assignment to frame a nutrition-related question and review the relevant literature. I found that studying the effects of a single nutrient in a randomized clinical trial involves asking very specific questions with a limited vocabulary. I found that the data analysis from epidemiological studies is beyond my comprehension. In short, I found that all the nice tidy details I found in my intro textbooks are not tidy at all.

Nutrition is certainly not the unique in this aspect. Push any area of study far enough and you will find its limits. One could view these limits as opportunities, take up research, and find more answers. My reaction, however, has been to step back - way back. I asked Nutrition if we could just be friends. I need some space right now. I need to see what else is out there.

Since my classes are not designed to address the Food System, I happily seek access points elsewhere, both on and off campus. I read books, I attend seminars, I watch the occasional movie. These are what I want to digest and disseminate. So stay tuned! I hope to post updates once a week. Send me things to read, events to attend, movies to watch, and ask questions. I look forward to engaging with you.

Updated January 2015.