PrintGrowing a Garden: A Moral Imperative?
Michael Pollan comes in swinging on this issue in in this article in the NYT. He's getting closer to a KO in many ways, to my mind.
In the next post, some quotes from the article.
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14 Comments:
From the article by MP/NYT:
So do you still want to talk about planting gardens?
I do.
Whatever we can do as individuals to change the way we live at this suddenly very late date does seem utterly inadequate to the challenge. It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous [N.B.!], cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why?
He writes of Wendell Berry:
For Berry, the deep problem standing behind all the other problems of industrial civilization is “specialization,” which he regards as the “disease of the modern character.”
And more -
Specialists ourselves, we can no longer imagine anyone but an expert, or anything but a new technology or law, solving our problems.
Karen Resta at 9:10AM on 04/22/08
Oh. P.S. If you don't understand my vague boxing lingo (I barely do myself) it means I'm considering a drive (ha ha in this stupid SUV my ex left me with which is impossible to get rid of unless some museum wants to buy it from me) to the garden center a bit later today. :)
Karen Resta at 9:17AM on 04/22/08
Interesting article - I am definitely contemplating a garden this year (I've done containers up until now) - gonna call that contractor husband of mine to find out when he can build me some raised beds!
Maureen at 9:26AM on 04/22/08
Thanks for linking to this, Karen. Read about half, so far. Pollan's writing is so approachable. He can make bitingly critical points without ferocity. And thrown daggers rarely ever win favor with me. Anyway, the more I read Pollan, the more I realize that I'm becoming a zombie. That the jobworld is eating my soul. And I am responsible for this.
Change is in order for me on this Earth Day '08. As Pollan advises, consuming less gasoline, electricity, water, meat and planting a garden is my plan.
@ Karen: Mr. Sus subscribes to Harper's and this month features a great Wendell Berry article. FYI. I'm gonna read it when I get the chance. You seem like a Harper's reader.
Susquehanna at 10:33AM on 04/22/08
I am compelled by both rising food costs and a need to do something good for my family as well as the earth and am contemplating plantinga small garden this year. However, if my houseplants are any indication of my success it is going to be a lean summer.
AuntJone at 10:37AM on 04/22/08
I to would love to plant a garden, however I fear the wrath of gardening associations who have threatened to hunt me down and bury me upside down in someone's compost heap if I even contemplate the mass slaughter of their little green friends again. I think it's safer for all concerned if I stick to the farmers markets:(
huney_bumper at 11:31AM on 04/22/08
I couldn't offer a thoughtful critique of the article, but intuitively I agree with it 100%. And I would love to go along with it, but there's no opportunity for me now.
renzata at 11:46AM on 04/22/08
Maureen: The raised beds idea is so wonderful - I've wanted to do that for a long time. End of this summer, we're moving into a place that has them already "built-in" so I'm thrilled. Container gardening just doesn't "feel" the same to me and real gardening a bit too beyond what I'm ready to commit to at the moment. P.S. Smart woman, marrying a man who can be put to work on some useful tasks! :)
Susquehanna: Pollan, to me, throws huge daggers. Lightning bolts even. He's just shaped them so nobody feels them as being such. Smart, smart person. I hope he never goes into politics, for his position/role/activities presently really do more to shape public opinion and make change based on that opinion than any politician or political alliances I can think of.
Aunt Jone: I know just what you mean. :) Ha, ha!
huney_bumper: Your story sounds like a great beginning to a science fiction movie. :)
renzata: Pollan is winning me over by intuition also. These smaller articles that are appearing seem to each aim at a different focal point - each one hits at a different way of entry into the readers minds. Brilliant.
Karen Resta at 6:34AM on 04/23/08
sorry Karen it's true. The only thing I'm qualified to grow is mold :(
huney_bumper at 7:53AM on 04/23/08
@Karen: I see what you mean. My point was that Pollan is not offensive, which allows him to be more pursuasive to me.
Also, I doubt he'd ever run for public office. Though, in my understanding of the word, he is quite the political person.
Susquehanna at 9:19AM on 04/23/08
Correction: Make that "persuasive." Sus = horrible speller.
Susquehanna at 9:23AM on 04/23/08
@Karen - I've had raised beds before and they really work. In my first house which was in a rural subdivision, I had a landscaper put in four 8 by 8 raised beds - and I grew enough veggies to drown my ex and me! I've lived in townhouses since then, but still managed a small garden in my last house for my daughter and me. This year, it's raised beds in our townhouse I now live in with my husband - our kids love veggies so much - but the backyard is rock with about 2 inches of soil on top, so raised beds it is! Easier to work, faster to warm up after winter, and kinda attractive as well!
PS Having a contractor for a husband is great - so long as you realize your "jobs" come last. But when the toilet quit, he replaced it. When the railing broke because number one step son leaned on it too hard while in a cast, he fixed it. When I complained about our ugly counter tops, he replaced them. He's a gem!
Maureen at 9:55AM on 04/23/08
This is an interesting article to read in tandem with the above-referenced Pollan article. Silly economics going on, in lots of places. It appears that as usual the human race is freestyle-dancing rather than putting choreography in place.
Karen Resta at 10:26AM on 04/26/08
I have just finished the fifth of my raised beds. The soil here in this part of California is very poor, but can produce abundantly if fed right and watered copiously. My wife and I compost everything compostable, the human waste going under the orchard where it feeds apples, plums and pears, the rest going into a bin where the dogs love to forage for eggshells. (No, that is not all they get to eat:}) There is a great deal of satisfaction in this, but it is also a hell of a lot of hard work and I wonder, in my steadily advancing years, if I will be able to keep it up. I will continue as long as I can, however, not for any sense of enhanced "virtue", but because the food tastes sooooo goood!
fewteeth at 7:15PM on 04/26/08