first thoughts

Almost five years ago, I had a very direct experience with illness and dying. My mother was diagnosed with Lymphoma, in the fall of 2004. She died a year and a half later after an unsuccessful battle with the cancer that gradually took control of her life. A tumor had first sprouted in her back, which was the source of the cancer, and it eventually spread. When my mom first started to feel the pain, she refused to go to the hospital, until my dad made her. She was in and out for nearly a month before we got the news that it was cancer. 

We had just moved to a brown stone in Washington Heights after a year of living in New York. I was in 6th grade and, in retrospect, I was socially confused. I had recently made friends with a large girl who bullied half of the school, and I became really caught up with my new social circle. My moms illness cut into the time I could spend with them. Instead of spending time teasing 8th graders or breaking the windows in the stairwell of my middle school, I'd visit my mother after school. I wasn't sure how I'd handle what was going on, so I separated myself from my family. I didn't begin taking the situation seriously until the first time my mom lost her hair after her first round of chemo. I had never known anyone with cancer before this, and I didn't know how her illness would affect her or me.

During that year and a half, there were many highs and lows related to my mothers sickness. We went through the highs of feeling as though she were getting better. At one point, we were even told that the cancer was in remission and that she would have stem cell transplant that would increase the possibility that the cancer would not return. However, just before the procedure, we learned that the cancer had actually spread and that my mother had a large tumor in her cervix. I think that the most unexpected aspect of my mothers illness is that it brought us closer together as a family. The evenings spent in the hospital, family meetings about my mothers treatments and ultimately, her death at home with all five of us surrounding all brought us closer together.

When I began writing this post, I kept on erasing the words that I would write, because I wanted to stray from writing about my mom. After thinking about what else I could write about, I figured it would be best to write about my mom because that is the most significant experience I've had with illness and dying. Because of the ways in which I was affected by my mothers death, I think that at times, I might grow uncomfortable with what we'll be studying, but I'm okay with that, because I know that its important to step out of comfort zones.

Final Food Project

My most recent projects have mostly been outside of school. Every Thursdays and Saturday mornings I attend a youth workshop at Added Value, an urban farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn. On Thursdays, we conduct workshops that involve youth empowerment by conducting workshops that have to deal with connecting the food justice movement to other issues such as the lack of love for a community such as Red Hook. Right beside Red Hook is Carroll Gardens, one of the nicest neighborhoods in Brooklyn, which is dominated by mostly Caucasians. Red Hook is slowly gentrifying, but the comparison between the two neighborhoods in terms of what should be in a good community is extreme.  In Red Hook, there are few supermarkets that supply fresh and healthy foods, so we look to Added Value as the change that we seek. 

The first time I went to Red Hook was last spring, on a Saturday morning during Added Values farmers market. The organization that I work with, the New York to New Orleans coalition, sold our t-shirts to buyers at the farmers market. I was taken on a tour of the urban farm by a high school student that had been working there for a long time. The next few times I went, we conducted workshops that had our students engaged. The first workshop we did was set up with at least 20 students. One student held onto a piece of string and said something that he/she thought that a good community needed. They would then pass the string to another person in the circle until everyone held onto a piece. Then at least three of us were told to drop our pieces to see what would come of the web that was created and the web flopped and appeared destroyed. This activity was supposed to symbolize what would happen to a community that did not have these aspects, like Red Hook. We then grabbed a pair of scissors and cut off a section of our web to hold onto what we made together (I made mine into a bracelet).

The next few times I attended Added Value, we went through a composting workshop where students were taught the process of turning, the worm bins, and so on. I think composting is vital when working on an urban farm because not only does it reuse old food that would have just gone to waste, but it also creates some of the most beautiful soil. I learned how to properly compost this summer, but doing the process in New York somehow seemed to resonate with me more.

I am currently working on making the green roof at School of the Future a productive site where students can learn, work, grow and eat. We've got at least 10 students on deck now, with our 'club name', The Green Thumbs Project. Some of our many ideas include: growing produce that we would be able to supply to our schools cafeteria, painting a new mural to make it more attractive (the revolution needs sex appeal), and growing and selling sprouts to make profit. The few students who are participating are becoming more committed, and the more people that we have involved, the more creative ideas that are circulating.

As for my food ways, which I have already described in previous assignments, I hardly ever buy outside food. I constantly make my own food, including lunch, which can be extremely expensive by my school. I also only carry a refillable water bottle as to not waste plastic. And, the only liquids that I drink are water and tea.

Food, Inc. Response

This past summer I went on a brigade to New Orleans where we conducted several workshops surrounding the idea of food justice. We tackled the lessons by first showing our participants either Food Inc., like we watched in class, or a a newer film called FRESH (http://www.freshthemovie.com/). When watching Food Inc. in class, our teacher constantly paused the film to ask us questions that would further our thinking, which I think helped my understanding of what was going on. My first viewing of Food Inc. had a large impact on me- it made me more concsious of my food intake, and eventually I became a vegetarian. But, some people's understanding of eating healthy isn't so strong, and I realized that I still ate at certain fast food restaurants (excluding McDonalds- I had banned it from my diet months before). My teacher assigned the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser to us not too long ago, and my initial reaction, before reading the book, was that I already knew everything I needed to know. After the first chapter, I realized that there was so much that I hadn't known about- and constantly writing blogs about what I had learned helped increase the amount that I understood. After watching Food Inc. for my first time, I paid attention to select pieces that stood out to me, but by demanding to know what I understood about the book, I got so much more out of Fast Food Nation than my first few viewings of Food Inc. When watching Food Inc. a second time, I tried to focus on every detail that I might have missed the first time, and I was able to gain so much more knowledge, but at the same time, try and critique the directors propaganda.