Good company.

I'm reading Michael Pollan's excellent book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has sufficiently impacted me in a way no other single literary work ever has.

I've been referring to him as my latest hero, a role filled since high school by men like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell.

So check this out, a passage I read today after writing the previous post last night:

"Isn't it curious how in so many of our pastimes and hobbies we play at supplying one or another of our fundamental creaturely needs--for food, shelter, even clothing? So some people knit, others build things or chop wood, and a great many of us "work" at feeding ourselves--by gardening or hunting, fishing or foraging. An economy organized around a complex division of labor can usually get these jobs done for a fraction of the cost, in time or money, that it takes us to do them ourselves, yet something in us apparently seeks confirmation that we still have the skills needed to provide for ourselves. You know, just in case. Evidently we want to be reminded how the fundamental processes that sustain us, by now hidden behind a globe-spanning scrim of economic complexity, actually work."
-Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma

Thanks for backing me up, g.


The fact is that many modern children are, by neglect and the devices of many other forces, deprived of these human satisfactions. Where children in the US can no longer rely on such conventions as family or culture or community (dying institutions indeed) to teach them these vital traditions, public education could step in. Alongside such enlightenments as mathematics and literature, shouldn't children be learning such practical arts as gardening and carpentry? I can only imagine the impact that hands-on programs might have in low-performance public schools. Look at the inspiring work of Alice Waters and her Edible Schoolyard.