Food coverageis supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky.

Jim Baum could not be a better poster child for the eat local movement, knowing personally every farmer and purveyor whose products he sells, and he likes to share his knowledge with his customers. Under the name Marin Community Farm Stands, the cowboy-hat-wearing Baum, 44, has a store in Forest Knolls in West Marin and twice a week operates farmstands, on tables beneath one large tent in San Anselmo and Ross. I caught up with him on a recent Friday afternoon at his stand in front of San Anselmo Town Hall.

J.: Youre a Jew from Brooklyn and then New Jersey. How did you become Mr. Eat Local of Marin County?

Jim Baum: My sister moved to L.A. first and I joined her there. But then I drove up the coast, and the more north I got, the more real it became, and I fell in love. Once my wife and I came over the hill to West Marin, we felt this is home, this is the place we want to be.

How did your business start?

There was a small farmers market happening in San Geronimo Valley but it was hard for farmers to get enough volume, so I thought that aggregating from several farms would be a good idea. The farmstand was born out of that, in 2003. I had never worked in food before, but living here, I became really passionate about real food and about representing the farmers who grow it. In addition to the two farmstands, I have my store in Forest Knolls thats been open for the past five years. I always say that every town should have local, organic produce, but how can farmers be selling in every town? They need to be on the farm. So I can do it for them.

Twice a week you bring the farmstand to two Marin communities that arent big enough to support their own farmers markets. There must be more places that would love for you to set up your farmstand.

Ive been approached by some small towns. [While] they have a lot of character, theres not enough parking. You certainly cant block off a main street, it would be a traffic disaster. San Rafael has the [largest] farmers market in Marin County.

How many farms do you work with? Are they all in Marin County?

I work with about 40 farms. In the beginning they were all in Marin, but now I work with some in Tulare and Yolo counties and maybe a few more.

You dont sell just produce, though. You have local meat, cheeses and fish from local fisherman.

Yes. Its a month before Thanksgiving and I have 67 free-range turkeys ordered from me already.

Whats your goal for your business?

I began with just me, and I have six employees now. I would love for this to be franchisable. It could scale in the Bay Area; we have such an abundance of sustainable farmers. If its not in season, we dont have it. People need access to local, seasonal produce. Whats super about a supermarket? Whats safe about Safeway?

You describe yourself as a non-practicing Jew, but youve become quite involved with the Jews of West Marin group started by Rabbi Mendel and Batsheva Rice.

Yes, they came to the farmstand one day with their brand new baby and we just became instant friends. They have this really positive Chabad joy about them, and that inspired me to want to help the formation of West Marin Jews and get reconnected with my roots.

Ive done a few events with them where Ive donated the food. We made homemade applesauce from farmstand apples on Hanukkah, for example. We recently made kosher pizzas for Sukkot in a friends cob oven. As long as the temperature was over 950 degrees, it could be kosher. I dont keep kosher myself, but why not do a kosher event? I like the idea of elevating food as a way of getting closer to the source.

Link:

While he sells their produce, farmers are freed up to farm - The Jewish News of Northern California

The Zest hosts Dalia Colon(L) and Robin Sussingham.

Ever listen to a podcast and wonder how the sausage is made? Go catch The Zest host a free, live 2 p.m. taping at Sweetwater Organic Community Farms Sunday Morning Market.

Host Robin Sussingham is interviewing bee experts about the ins and outs of beekeeping, and why you should care about Floridas honey bees. Hear the buzz about whats pollinating in Tampa Bay, and stick around to sample some local honey. This family-friendly event comes with free parking, and the Sweetwater market kicks off at noon.

Sun. Nov. 10, 2 p.m.-4 p.m. Free, bring cash for market vendors. Sweetwater Organic Community Farm, 6942 W. Comanche Ave., Tampa. thezestpodcast.com.

Want to know everything going on with Tampa Bay's food and drink scene? Sign up for our Bites newsletter.

Link:

Tampa Bay food podcast The Zest hosts free live taping at Sweetwater Farm this Sunday - Creative Loafing Tampa

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Sacks of green chile are stacked by a field owned by the Grajeda family in Hatch. The Hatch Chile Festival celebrates the harvest during Labor Day weekend. (Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal )

Back in July, I visited my sister who lives in Vancouver, Washington, just north of Portland, Oregon. She is a chile fanatic, and when we are together, we try to cook both red and green chile dishes. When I visit her, I pack my suitcase with fragrant ground red chile from New Mexico. On this recent visit, we went to the supermarket to pick up some fixings to prepare our recipes. As we are strolling down the salsa aisle, she suddenly stops and lets out a cry, Look at this! I caught up with her and followed her gaze to dried red chile pods with Hatch chile on the label. Alongside were canned green chiles from Hatch. This was the first time she had seen Hatch chile sold where she lives.

One month later, she calls me ecstatically to tell me that her local organic produce store is holding a Hatch chile roasting demonstration, which featured chile roasted in the classic rotating roaster that we in the Southwest see in the fall months as chile season is upon us. Having hit the jackpot, my sister was in heaven. She ended up buying two 50-pound sacks of roasted chile. Knowing my sister, this might not last her through the winter.

Fresh, canned, or incorporated into recipes, you can now see Hatch chile featured in major fast-food chains throughout the world. Restaurants from Los Angeles to New York are serving dishes with Hatch chile. Globally, Hatch has become the standard for what is considered Southwest-style chile real chile, not the kind that looks like sloppy joe mix or tomato-based. I wont even acknowledge that Cincinnati chile can even be called chile. And notice that in New Mexico we spell chile with an e at the end of the word, not an i. Although I must admit that my favorite chile is the Chimay strain, having grown up eating this particular flavor in the northern New Mexico town of Espaola near the village of Chimay. I love Hatch chile in stews, enchiladas, sandwiches, and just on a plain toasted tortilla. Happiness for me is going to the Village of Hatch during chile season with my windows rolled down to smell fresh chiles being roasted.

Mind you, New Mexico has other places famous to the locals for chile such as Espaola, Lemitar, and Chimay. But curious as to why Hatch, a village of fewer than 2,000 people, located approximately half an hour north of Las Cruces, could become the epicenter of chile, I started researching the history of Hatch chile. All sources I reviewed say that chile has been grown in the Hatch Valley for centuries. However, the phenomenon of what is Hatch chile has several major components. The first is Joseph and Celestina Franzoy, Austrian immigrants who settled in the Hatch Valley in 1917. They were farmers unfamiliar with chile. One anecdote is that the first time they were served chile, they thought their host was trying to poison them. However, very quickly after this incident they fell in love with chile and saw it as a more financially advantageous crop compared with others, such as cotton.

Up until this time, chile was mostly grown for personal use. Being a natural entrepreneur, Joseph began to load his wagon with chile and sell it around the region, thus becoming the first person to commercialize what was to become Hatch chile. Others followed, and within a few decades, the concept of Hatch chile began to take shape. In 1971, just about the time that Americans started a love affair with spicy foods, the Hatch Chile Festival was established, growing from a handful of attendees to more than 30,000 today. As word spread about Hatch chile, it declared itself the Chile Capital of the World. A lot of places declare themselves the capital of the world for one reason or another, but most do not get past the tipping point where the label sticks.

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Finally, and most important, Hatch is a fantastic chile that is great-tasting. It is grown in a unique portion of the world the high, dry, New Mexico desert provides the climate and sandy soil conditions just right for Hatch chile to become, well, Hatch chile. Its roasted scent is the fragrance of New Mexico, and one of the first foods I can remember smelling.

Throughout the world, as people have started incorporating chile into their cuisine, the fame of Hatch chile has spread like a wildfire, no pun intended. When I can travel to the Portland, Oregon, area, the last place in the U.S. I would expect to find dried Hatch chile pods or to see fresh green chile being roasted New Mexico-style, it makes me proud to see what the tiny village of Hatch and its farmers have accomplished. New Mexican cuisine also has become famous throughout the world, in large part due to the success of Hatch chile. Isnt it ironic that Austrian immigrants, who supposedly experienced anti- immigrant hatred after WWI, came to a state dominated by minorities, fell in love with one of the mainstays of New Mexico cuisine, and helped make it world-famous? Their experience fits well within the multicultural diversity story that is New Mexico.

Writing about the aura of Hatch chile makes me want to thaw some roasted green chile I have in my freezer so that I can make green chile stew tonight. I bet my sister is doing the same thing.

Jerry Pacheco is the executive director of the International Business Accelerator, a nonprofit trade counseling program of the New Mexico Small Business Development Centers Network. He can be reached at 575-589-2200 or at jerry@nmiba.com.

See the original post:

Our Hatch chile is finding its way everywhere - Albuquerque Journal

Gothenburg, Sweden (CNN) Halfway between Copenhagen and Oslo, on a rocky Swedish coastline, lies the largest non-capital in the Nordics.

Gothenburg has always played second fiddle to its big sister Stockholm. Historically seen as a lesser city -- more Volvo-industrial Sweden than sexy Spotify Sweden -- this salty seaport has spent the past few decades completely reinventing itself after the collapse of its vital shipbuilding industry in the 1970s.

The city does retain some of its industrial roots, but it's also a youthful university town, a high-tech research hub and, most importantly, a leader in sustainability whose population is expected to balloon by a third over the next 15 years thanks to its increasing allure.

Liseberg theme park's rides and attractions are all powered by renewable wind energy.

Mark Johanson

Despite the superlatives, Katarina Thorstensson, head of sustainability at tourism board Gteborg & Co, says "we try not to rub the word sustainability in peoples' faces, but rather communicate it in the atmosphere."

"To us, sustainability is very much about making a livable and a lovable city," she explains. "If the people of Gothenburg like living here, then other people will probably like to come here, too."

Gothenburg is a green city, in part, thanks to its closeness to forests and parks, but also on account of its compact layout and plentiful public transportation, 65% of which runs on renewable energy.

So what does all of this eco-mindedness look like in practice? Here's how you can eat, drink, sleep, shop and explore the greener side of Gothenburg.

What to do

Jubileumsparken features a free public sauna with changing facilities made from recycled bottles.

Mark Johanson

Gothenburg claims an astounding 274 square meters (2,950 square feet) of green space per citizen. That translates to loads of urban parkland to visit on a (not so rare as you'd think) sunny day.

Vast Slottsskogen is ideal for serene forest walks, while Keillers Park offers hilltop strolls and soaring views over the bustling harbor. Sinewy Kungsparken is the most central of all. It forms a green girdle around the heart of town, lying on land that once held ramparts protecting Gothenburg from pesky Danish invaders.

Anyone can come here to swim in the public pool, bathe at a city beach, grow food in the urban garden, try out roller derby or sailing, or just relax by the water -- all free of charge. There's also a highly Instagrammable (and free to use) public sauna whose changing facilities were made from 12,000 recycled bottles.

Where to eat and drink

Taverna Averna sources organic produce for its creative thin-crust pizzas and salads from its rooftop garden.

Mark Johanson

If Swedes have one national obsession it's fika, which translates to "a cake and coffee break" but is so much more than that in reality. Fika is a daily social ritual, an attitude and a Swedish state of mind. It's also a delicious injection of caffeine and sugar that keeps the country running.

Wherever you go, briny crustaceans like crayfish and lobster from the nearby Bohusln Coast are your best bet for true locavore cuisine. The critters are so fresh here you only need lemon and butter for seasoning.

Where to sleep

Hotel Eggers gets its electricity from its own wind turbine off the coast.

Mark Johanson

A staggering 92% of all accommodation options in Gothenburg are eco-certified by regional sustainability organizations, so you can sleep easy knowing that your hotel is doing its part.

This glittery highrise hotel by Liseberg not only receives its energy from wind power, but also recycles 94% of its waste (leftover food goes to a local charity, while scraps are converted into the biogas fueling ovens in its five restaurants).

Here is the original post:

Is this the world's most forward-thinking city? - CNN

One of the main arguments you hear against organic food is the price. Its perceived as being too expensive. In reality, I think this argument is only partially true. Consider the air miles, the animal welfare and the potential impact of intensive farming practices on our environment.

All of that said, I understand that Im typing this from a privileged position. For me, a couple of quid isnt going to break the bank. Im able to choose to eat organic because I can afford it. I can preach about saving the planet and higher animal welfare standards because I have those extra pennies in my pocket. But lets be honest, I dont have that many pennies. I lost my job in August through redundancy, and while I job hunt, Ive been pulling my belt in. Its meant that Ive been searching for ways to reduce my food spend and you know what? Eating organic doesnt have to be expensive, but it does take some dedication.

Ive realised that you might need to shop around, but if youre savvy and plan ahead, organic doesnt have to cost much more than a usual supermarket shop.

Buying reduced organic food in bulk and freezing can help save money. Image @GingeyBites.

Ive been hitting the reduced section hard. Organic meat is more expensive, and theres no getting away from that. Youre paying for farming techniques, smaller crops, lower yields, legislation and regulation. Ultimately, that organic stamp on your leg of lamb or chicken symbolises a better product. A tastier piece of meat that has come from an animal raised with higher welfare standards and on a farm which practices environmentally friendly farming techniques. Ive also found that some organic meat goes a lot further. A couple of richer sausages do the work of a packet in a stew, chicken breast dont shrivel into nothing in the pan.

Waitrose and Sainsburys usually have a decent range of organic meat, and this often ends up in the yellow sticker section, but youll really hit the jackpot if you visit your local organic supermarket or farm shop. Our Riverford veg box, with the addition of eggs and milk costs around 14.00 and for the amount of food we get, I dont think thats a lot of money.A quick tot-up on the Sainsburys website brings a similar non-organic shop to just under 9.00.

I appreciate that independent organic supermarkets dont exist everywhere. If youre lucky enough to live in Bristol, Brighton or London, for example, places like Better Food Co, HISBE and Planet Organic are your best friends.

If there is reduced price meat on offer, I buy the lot and stick it in the freezer. I do the same with vegetables. This requires a bit more time as you will need to cook them pretty soon after purchase.

If you can get your hands on a lot of one or two items, Id recommend cooking them into stews, soups and sauces and then freezing them. Aubergines and courgettes are perfect for vegetable curries, and pasta sauce with fresh tomatoes always tastes better than tinned. Think creatively leafy greens and root veg can be turned into stock. Freeze it in sandwich bags, jars or ice cube trays. Chillies freeze well too, as does milk and even cheese. There are so many things we can freeze. Did you know, for example, you can even freeze mashed potato?

Your shopping might take a little longer, and require some time in the kitchen to prep food into freezable states but if you have the time, its worth it for the satisfaction in knowing that youre able to shop organic even when money is tight.

Here is the original post:

Be savvy and eat organic on a budget - Wicked Leeks

If you peruse the corners of the internet occupied by the alt-right, sometimes called the manosphere, youre likely to encounter a lot of references to ancient Greece and Rome.

Theres a fascination with Spartan culture and stoic philosophers and famous thinkers like Aristotle and Plato. The men who consume this stuff and yes, its almost exclusively men tend to believe two things: that ancient Greek and Roman culture are the basis of Western civilization and that these cultures are the exclusive achievements of white men.

But the idea isnt merely to celebrate these ancient cultures. The goal is to turn a phrase like Western civilization into code for white culture and to cement a narrative about history that glorifies patriarchy and undercuts cultural progressivism.

This, of course, isnt all that new. As I wrote back in 2018, the alt-right appropriates the philosopher Nietzsche in similar ways and for similar reasons. But the obsession with Greece and Rome seems to be more widespread, and perhaps even mainstream.

Donna Zuckerberg, editor-in-chief of Eidolon, an online Classics magazine, examines this trend in her book, Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age. I spoke to her recently about the appeal of ancient history to the alt-right, how its used to reinforce misogyny and racism, and why the field of Classics has a major problem on its hands.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

I think the best way to start is to have you explain why ancient Greece and Rome is so culturally significant to the alt-right.

Western civilization has, for the alt-right, become culturally acceptable code for white culture. So celebration of Western civilization is really a way to celebrate the cultural achievements of white men. They see ancient Greece and Rome as a starting point for this imagined idea of Western civilization, and later it evolves to include Christianity in the medieval period.

It gives them a unified cultural narrative to draw on.

So history is a device for glorifying masculinity and whiteness, both of which they take to be synonymous with Western civilization?

Exactly.

Part of whats so odd about the race dimension is that race as a category, or at least race as we think of it today, had almost no meaning in these ancient societies.

Right, ancient Greece and Rome were actually quite diverse and the concept of whiteness didnt have much meaning thousands of years ago. Race, as we know it, is a fairly recent category. But the far-right relies on this construct of Western civilization, which for them means white civilization and culture. So they craft a narrative that begins with Greece and Rome and then continues into the medieval period up through the emergence of modern Europe.

And what are the main themes you see beyond the usual white men are the most rational tropes? What specific conclusions are they drawing from history or what assumptions are they justifying?

They look to the ancient world for the confirmation of their pre-existing worldview, which is not necessarily easy to boil down to a few simple ideas the far-right, especially online, is intentionally malleable and difficult to pin down.

Most of its ideology depends on ideas taken from evolutionary psychology about normal, natural human behavior. So this includes ideas that men are naturally dominant and rational and women are emotional, along with a whole set of other ideas about gendered behavior (for example, the idea that women naturally want to marry up and thus are always looking for an alpha male).

But there are other ideas under this umbrella, too like tribalism, which they consider natural to human psychology and use to justify arguments for racism and against race mixing. They use whatever they can find to provide intellectual justification for these ideas, including history.

Theres also an obsession with cultural decline.

Why the obsession with decline?

The short answer is they want to predict what the future of America will look like, so they turn to these ancient cultures for patterns that reinforce their expectations. For instance, theres a strong belief that liberals are trying to create a chaotic multicultural society thats destined to fail; and the purity and patriarchy of ancient cultures, on their reading, is just a superior model, or at the very least, an argument in defense of their worldview.

Let me ask you this as a historian: Is there some validity to these arguments? In other words, are they projecting their own biases onto history or is their bias genuinely reflected back at them when they look at this history?

Both are true. On the one hand, their knowledge of ancient history and literature is often very shallow, and the scholar in me wants to interject by adding much more nuance and complexity to their awful interpretations.

But their analysis, in spite of being oversimplified and sometimes misleading, isnt necessarily fundamentally wrong. The fact is that many societies in classical antiquity were very patriarchal, and misogynistic ideas can be found in many canonical texts from ancient literature. So theyre not necessarily wrong to see, for example, misogyny in Ovids Ars Amatoria.

The question is how to interpret the text and how to decide what it means today.

Who are we talking about here? Is this mostly a marginalized internet phenomenon confined to incels and pick up artists or has this way of thinking, this way of interpreting history, become mainstream?

When I was writing Not All Dead White Men, I was looking primarily at online far-right communities. But Ive been surprised to see, in 2019, how much of the pushback against progressive Classical Studies has come not from the kind of people I studied, but from conservative and center-right intellectuals, who see progressive classicists as attacking the cultural heritage of Western civilization and trying to dismantle the canon.

It really has become a new skirmish in the culture wars.

But its also a problem for the actual discipline of Classics, right? There were reports of a racist incident at a Classics conference earlier this year, which speaks to how deep the rot goes.

Yes, absolutely. The incident you mention took place at the 2019 SCS in San Diego, the biggest Classics conference of the year. There was a lot of energy around progressive, antiracist Classics at that conference, which led to the formation of some new groups to promote the work of classicists of color.

But there were also several horrifying racist incidents, including the one you mentioned and one which involved the racial profiling of two students who were at the conference to receive an award for their incredible outreach work with the Sportula. In the aftermath of those incidents, there was a wave of harassment and backlash to progressive Classics led by sites like Quillette and The New Criterion.

My work in this book focuses on the reception of Classics in communities that are often vocally white supremacist. But the ties between racism and Classics exist in other places outside the internet. Theres a painful reckoning happening in Classics as a discipline as we try to confront our own complicity and do the hard work to make the study of Classics truly welcoming to all, not just a discipline where white men see their values reflected back at them.

Circling back to the way this stuff plays out online, the main goal of these alt-right types is to cement this idea that white men are the guardians of intellectual authority. But are they actually defending a tradition or are they just looking for a rhetorical club to beat women and people of color with?

I think its both. On the one hand, they do love that rhetorical club. But harassing people online actually takes a lot of effort, and having a real cause is extremely motivating. Defending their culture against those who want to destroy it provides that motivation. So this fixation on defending ancient history, defending this great civilizational legacy, is a very galvanizing force.

As I said in my interview with Angela Nagle, author of Kill All Normies, half the time I cant tell if these people are waging a genuine civilizational battle or just a heroic trolling campaign.

You seem to think its both.

I do think its both, and I think its very difficult to tell which it is at any moment. In the Daily Stormers Normies Guide to the Alt-Right, Andrew Anglin identifies one of the hallmarks of the alt-right as non-ironic Nazism masquerading as ironic Nazism. They want you to feel like youd be stupid to take them seriously, but also just as stupid maybe even more so to ignore them.

Its a very slippery but clever strategy, one thats perfectly adapted to modern internet culture.

People have always used history and philosophy to prop up their transgressive ideologies Whats your solution to the problem? Can we ever really stop people from weaponizing history?

No, we cant. We can provide alternatives, and continue to imagine new and different ways to think about what ancient Greece and Rome mean in the present day. And we can try to correct false information where we see it. Its a constant battle, but its an important one for any area of study to engage in.

We should always be thinking about what the study of our subject means and why its important.

I also wonder how much of this is a function of the way these internet platforms are designed and structured. How many people start off with a genuine interest in history and then find themselves pulled into a black hole of misogyny and racism and hate?

This idea haunts me. Again, I think all we can do is try to provide other content for people to find, which is part of what Im trying to do with my publication Eidolon.

You also point to a strange overlap between how the far-right and the far-left view the whole tradition of ancient philosophy Both sides see it as an affirmation of white male supremacy, only one wants to revive it and the other wants to replace it.

Im curious how you respond to the left on this front?

I dont think that anybody should feel obligated to study Classics. If your personal feeling is that it can never be more than white supremacist patriarchy re-inscribing its own values through the Western canon, then I completely understand why you wouldnt want to study it.

But if youre politically progressive and find Classics fascinating, then theres a lot of exciting work being done in the field to study that tension. I would point people in that direction and encourage them not to accept what theyve told about what history is or must be.

Read the original:
Why the alt-right loves ancient Greece and Rome - Vox.com

Ask students to read for more than a couple of sentences and many will protest that they cant do it. The most frequent complaint that teachers hear that its boring. It is not so much the content of the written material that is at issues here; it is the act of reading itself that is deemed to be boring. What we are facing here is not just time-honored teenage torpor, but the mismatch between a post-literate New Flesh that is too wired to concentrate and the confining concentrational logics of decaying disciplinary systems. To be bored means simply to be removed from the communicative sensation-stimulus matrix of texting, You Tube and fast food; to be denied, for a moment, the constant flow of sugary gratification on demand. Some students want Nietzsche in the same way they want a hamburger; the fail to graspand the logic of the consumer system encourages this misapprehensionthe indigestibility, the difficult is Nietzsche.

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

I am a substitute teacher (grades K-12) in a public school system located in Virginia, a state on the eastern seaboard of the United States. For many years prior to becoming a substitute teacher, I also taught at a private school in Virginia. Tuition and fees at the private school are approximately $42,000 (USD), the public schools are, of course, tuition free.

To be sure, there are highly motivated students in both educational settings that call into question Mark Fishers observation above. But in the main, both organizations struggle with figuring out if they are working with their subjects as students or as consumers of services provided by teachers and administrators.

From what I have observed in the tiny microcosm in which Ive worked, adults have not figured out how to teach Generation Z. It is as if K-12 students are; well, lab rats, in a messy experiment that reflects adult confusion about how to facilitate learning in an era when all the book learning education seeks to impart is largely available on the World Wide Web (WWW). Reality hits video screens before adults can interpret it for their children; that is, assuming the adults are up to the task. Twitter, a modern day ticker-tape, dumbs down the American populace. Attention spans for students and adults are measured in 10 minute increments, if that.

Teachers are little more than circuits in Americas educational network and, as such, transmit surface information to the students and little more. The kids know a lot, for sure, but they, like the adults that school them and lead them, have no intellectual depth, something required for critical thinking. It is fitting, I suppose, that in these times when the United States is a polarized nation of cynics who believe in nothing, its not surprising that its educators teach the young to be cynics. But as Oscar Wilde noted through one of his characters, a cynic is one who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

And yet the very adults (academics, corporate leaders, politicians) that created this cynical, digitized short attention span world whine about students not being able to read and write, think critically or master math. There is a reason for that: They are not being taught effectively to do those things. All of which reaffirms something I wrote in 2013: The American Education System is creating Ignorant Adults.

The leaders of Boeing and Lockheed Martin worry out loud about the absence of US school aged students who can excel at science, technology, engineering and math disciplines (STEM). But they have no problem funding initiatives for Chinese students and aviation professionals in China.

Hocus Pocus

Back in the USA, school classrooms are a mishmash of technology, new wave/repackaged learning techniques and revisionist history. Apple I-Pads and Smart Boards are located in each classroom for student/teacher use. They are all connected to software that provides music, cartoons and learning platforms like Canvas for most grade levels. The latest teaching fads like Maker Learning with its Digital Promise backed by Google and Pixar, among others, competes with concepts like the Flipped Classroom, Blended Learning and other pedagogies that come in and out of vogue. And yet, along side all the technology are crayons, magic markers, pencils, paper and cardboard for writing and drawing.

Its no stretch to say that I-Phones, Android and other hand held devices may cause epigenetic changes. Students, teachers/coaches and administrators are constantly staring head down at their computing-communications devices. It is tough to get a face-to-face conversation going with most anyone in these groups as their eyes and heads are in the down position while sitting, walking or standing. Even if you are having a meatspace meeting, participants will incessantly dart their eyes to the handheld safely nearby the hand, in the hand, or on the lap (looking down again).

Americas past, woeful in many respects, is being revised again by adults to suit the agenda of those who seek to promote a narrative that seeks to change the political/cultural narrative of US society and its history, and it is aimed at young students in particular. The New York Times (NYT) 1619 Project is an example of this. According to the World Socialist Website, The 1619 Project, launched by the Times in August, presents American history in a purely racial lens and blames all white people for the enslavement of 4 million black people as chattel property.

The NYT has provided teaching materials that are being used by colleges, universities and high schools across the United States. Who is willing or capable of debating the claims of the New York Times; or should we say, who is willing to be labeled a racist for disagreeing with The revisionist authors of the 1619 Project? At the collegiate level, at least, there may be debate on the matter but at the high school level, what teacher is going to argue against using 1619 teaching materials. After all it is the New York Times.

What is very troubling about the NYT revisionism is that it makes the preposterous claim that racism is part of the DNA of all white people. The World Socialist Website claims that: This is dangerous politics, and very bad history[it] mixes anti-historical metaphors pertaining to biological determinism (that racism is printed in a national DNA) and to religious obscurantism (that slavery is the uniquely American original sin). But whether ordained by God or genetic code, racism by whites against blacks serves, for the 1619 Project, as historys deus ex machina. There is no need to consider questions long placed at the center of historical inquiry: cause and effect, contingency and conflict, human agency and change over time. History is simply a morality tale written backwards from 2019.

Sharpen My Pencils, Fool!

I have often winced at some of the practices I observed in classrooms. On a typical day as a substitute, I arrive at a school, pick up instructions left by the teacher who is absent (or has a meeting), and head to the classroom. Substitute teachers, or Subs, are a lower class of species, members of the gig economy, and treated as such by the real teachers and students. I remember one teacher I subbed for was headed off to a meeting and as she left said, Sharpen my pencils for me. I dutifully did. A majority of the teachers and administrators dont ask for your name, youre just known as The Sub.

Once students complete their work (if they even choose to do it), which for most does not take much class time, they are free to play video games, stick ear buds in and listen to music or hang out with friends via the handheld device. One of the popular video games with male 6th to 12th graders is Krunker, a first person shooter game. Is US society really that concerned about active shooters in schools?

The State and corporations can be found in some form in the public school system. One elementary school has Lockheed Martin as a sponsor of a science program. In another elementary school, a class is learning about Virginias geography: The students print and video work product will ultimately be used by a tourism association in the State.

In both institutions learning is calibrated to the SAT, ACT and various Advanced Placement tests. Student test scores serve as one metric for teacher performance reviews along with standards set by school boards, the State, or independent audits in the private school case.

Students are not required to stand or even pay attention to the United States Pledge of Allegiance that is carried via intercom into the classrooms each morning. Some schools dont even bother with it. Yet, during sporting events like American contact football, students/athletes and fans are required, or lets say by the pressure of custom are compelled, to stand for the playing of the United States National Anthem. American flags are stitched into football jerseys and prior to games one football player is selected to run the American flag onto the field amidst the adrenaline fueled shouts and growls of fellow teammates following close behind. A color guard from a high schools junior reserve officer training corps (JROTC) sometimes is present. They present in strict marching formation the American flag along with the flags of the US Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force.

To stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance in a classroom takes one minute. To be upright for the National Anthem takes, perhaps, five minutes. The school band normally plays the latter and on occasion high school Madrigals will sing the National Anthem.

Yes, the militarization of US society and the deification of military personnel, even if they are accountants in uniform working at the Pentagon, is something to be concerned about. But saying the Pledge, and standing for the National Anthem, should be a requirement for students. There has to be some measure or display of loyalty to ones country and the young must learn that. Still many want to wipe away any sense of citizenship, patriotism. Well, they are doing a fine job of that.

Mind the Inmates!

Students at both institutions are the beneficiaries of some serious force protection measures normally associated with protecting military personnel stationed at installations around the globe. The public schools in which I worked have armed police officers on site with a phalanx of civilian security/disciplinarians roaming the halls. Security cameras are everywhere indoors (hallways) and outside (entry and exit) recording movements. Public school buses are also outfitted with cameras and tracking systems.

The private school where I was once employed uses a less blunt force approach opting for a more subtle presence: security personnel are a bit less obvious and do not carry firearms. The school does employ a corporate style full-time director of security and safety with some serious emergency management credentials.

It is the same security scene at public and private schools across the United States which raises an interesting question: Are students really captive minds in minimum security enclosures subjected daily to social, emotional learning techniques or socialization/habilitation for entry into society? Or are they free learners allowed to be creative and explore beyond the confines of the pedagogy that seeks to standardize them.

No Student Untracked

There is a functioning big data brother at work tracking students as they make their way through K-12 known as the Common Core of Data (CCD). CCD is described by Marc Gardner in a presentation for the US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)as the annual collection of the universe of United States public elementary, secondary education agencies and schools. Data include enrollment by grade, race/ethnicity and sex, special education, english learners, school lunch programs, teachers, dropouts and completers. The CCD also gathers information from state justice, health and labor departments. The NCES also collects data from private schools.

It doesnt end there. Colleges and universities are tracking high school seniors as they begin their searches for schools theyd like to attend. The Washington Post recently reported that many colleges and universities have hired data capture firms to track prospective students as they explore websites. Records and interviews show that colleges are building vast repositories of data on prospective students scanning test scores, zip codes, high school transcripts, academic interests, web browsing histories, ethnic backgrounds and household incomes

The owner of Canvas, referenced above, is Instructure. Their mission, according to their investor website is to grow [the young] from the first day of school to the last day of work [retirement]. One of the capabilities that Instructure provides its clients is Canvas Folio Management. According to the investor webpage, it delivers an institutional homepage and deep, real-time analytics on student engagement, skills and competencies, network connections, and interactions across various cohorts. Allows institutions to generate custom reports tied directly to student success initiatives and export accreditation-ready reports on learning outcomes at the student, cohort, course, program, or institutional level.

Ah, yes, the thrill of being hunted for a life time by big data brother. Anyway, there is no escape.

Dont try this in a Classroom

Learning is an active process, not simply a matter of banking information in a recipient passive mind. Teaching therefore has to be a transactional process rather than just the transmission of information. The transactional aspect is essential to enabling students to challenge their situations in life, which they must learn to do if they are to play their parts as active citizens of a better worldteaching must be approached as an intellectually disruptive and subversive activity if it is to instill inquiry skills in learners and encourage them to think for themselves rather than mindlessly accept received ideas. We believe it is more important in the digital age than ever before. (Ingenious: The Unintended Consequences of Human Innovation by Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson, Harvard, 2019)

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America's Education System: Teaching the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing - CounterPunch

After underwhelming play through the soft beginning of their schedule, the Nets have to head out on their longest road trip of the year.

And they dont consider that a bad thing.

I love it, Taurean Prince said. I love playing away. Its a great time to grow camaraderie as a team, a great time to figure out who we really are. I think road games make teams stronger.

Hey, like Friedrich Nietzsche said, long western swings that dont kill us make us stronger.

The Nets already have stumbled through the supposedly easy part of the slate, with five of their first seven games at home and only two versus teams that had winning records last season. Now the going is about to get harder.

Five teams that are pretty good in our league, Kyrie Irving said. A great test to go on the road trip for that long.

After Thursdays practice, the Nets will fly out to begin a five-game swing through Portland, Phoenix, Utah, Denver and Chicago. Theyll be taking a step up in competition, too: That quintet is a combined 9-5 at home, while the Nets are 0-2 on the road.

Theres a lot of team dinners, a lot of the camaraderie is built on these trips. Obviously were excited to compete on the West Coast, but the stuff off the court is fun as well, Joe Harris said.

Its kind of fun, best friends, were together every day, Jarrett Allen added. Were going to be out having fun and were also going to have the serious side of basketball, so were just going to go out there, work our hardest and enjoy the trip.

Allen could end up working overtime on the trip. He has split the center spot with DeAndre Jordan, but the veteran suffered a sprained right ankle on Monday. The Nets offered no details on the grade or severity, nor any timeline for Jordans return.

What they did say was this trip offers an opportunity to develop chemistry.

Obviously theres nothing like being at home, but thats really where you come together as a group, Irving said. You want to come out with a winning record. Take those opportunities to play on other organizations floors or going against other good guys in our league.

Some great matchups up ahead. You just look forward to that challenge, just use the time to build team camaraderie, obviously spending some time in those cities. All we have is each other. We have our significant others sometimes on the trips, but for the most part its just us.

The Nets havent commented on whether Jordans injury will change plans for a 16th player to replace the suspended Wilson Chandler.

Center Alan Williams led the G-League in rebounding last season as a Nets two-way player, but a source close to the 26-year-old who is with Russias Lokomotiv Kuban said he isnt currently an option.

Former Nets chairman Dmitry Razumov ran Sundays New York City Marathon, and blistered through it in a solid 2:52.37.

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Nets are really pumped for tough, long road trip - New York Post

The day that the theme of the Costume Institutes spring exhibition is announced marks the beginning of months of wild speculation. Yes, fashion fans will discuss what sorts of magic Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, will whip up in the museums galleries, but alsoand much more comically sothere is the issue of the Met Gala and its red carpet. Each year, guests of the ball are asked to dress according to a theme related to the exhibit. How will attendees grapple with this years show, About Time: Fashion and Duration, and the galas dress code: timeless?

The internet had plenty of ideas. Some instantly took up Boltons reference material, Virginia Woolfs Orlando and Sally Potters 1992 film adaptation, calling for Tilda Swintonworthy corsetry and frock coats. Others looked to the cochairsLin-Manuel Miranda, Meryl Streep, Emma Stone, and Nicolas Ghesquirecalling out each stars best, and most timeless, looks as inspiration. Still more have suggested commissioning flat circle costumes, which could either go full Nietzsche or, for a more pop cultural spin, channel Matthew McConaughey in True Detective.

We wont know if any of this will come to pass until May 4, 2020, but here are some of the internets best takes on the themes, as of now.

Originally Appeared on Vogue

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24 Hours Later, the Internet Is Still Working Out This Years Met Gala Theme - Yahoo Lifestyle

Im going to die one day. Im relatively certain youre going to as well. Theres worse things I guess; just dont ask me what. Im not a philosopher, and you dont have to examine my writing closely to see that every other word I write doesnt end in -ology or -ogical, so Im probably underqualified to ramble on about life and death. On the other hand, death is almost certainly going to be a lived experience for me, so I might have some authority on the subject. I was given some advice about the inevitability of death recently, so I might as well have a little fun. Pass (it) on, so to speak.

I found myself just standing in a greenhouse, soaking in the beauty around me, wondering whether The Miscellany News office would look less like purgatory if it featured a fern or a nice large hanging plant. Out of the blue, the shopkeeper offered some wisdom that probably only comes from being around fading beauty the wilting flowers, dying plants, the indelible fragility of nurturing lifefor long periods of time: Dont take [yourself] too seriously. Youre going to die one day.

As much as I dont like being reminded of the mortality of someone I actually like, the shopkeeper is dead right. Im not going to pretend to know enough about nihilism to cite Nietzsche (I have enough trouble just spelling it) or have any great insights about life as a mortal, but there is great comfort in the idea of your own death, of finality. The late-night comedian Conan OBrienwhos actually remarkably well-educated and graduated from Harvard University magna cum lauderecalled a conversation with Albert Brooks where Brooks said, In 1940, people said Clark Gable is the face of the 20th Century. Who [expletive] thinks about Clark Gable? It doesnt matter. Youll be forgotten. Ill be forgotten. Well all be forgotten. (New York Times, Conan OBrien Wants to Scare Himself With the New, Shorter Conan, 01.14.2019). I think about that quote a lot. It makes you think about whats actually important. Is it personal or organizational success? Do you want to be the best? Are you driven by the envy of others? All motives are fine if thats what you want to do, but dont do anything just because you think youll be remembered for it.

What you should take away from that quote isnt that nothing we do matters. Instead, understand that if nothing you do will be remembered in the long run, you should try to do the right thing in each and every moment. If you promised to do something, you should do it. Not because it matters but because nothing else matters either. Maybe its because Im poor and not exceptionally successful, but all I have is my word, and if I dont have that, then I have nothing left at all. If you have no reason to do wrong, if you have nothing to gain because youre going to die and nothing matters, why not just do the right thing?

I honestly think Vassar would be a better place if more people thought this way. Forget about your legacy, what youll leave behind. Help some people, bite off more than you can chew, make mistakes and try again. Live life to the fullest because this life might be all you get. Stop worrying that youll look silly or if someone will think youre unserious. Listen: You can still be successful, competent and reliable without taking yourself too seriously. You can still be a good student even while realizing that its absurd that youre trading pieces of paper (tuition) that you dont have (student debt) for words (lectures) from people who write fan fiction about the gay brother of a Russian migr. This is a real thing that happens, and its hilarious on so many different levels. If you cant be a little un-serious, a little silly, youre wasting the humor that surrounds us all the time. Youre wasting your own life, and do you have a resource any more precious? I certainly dont.

This isnt the only reaction that you can have to the news that youll die. You could also go down the route of burning, looting and pillaging, being evil for evils sake. Thats a reaction, I will admit, but I hardly think thats a good way to go about things. For one, its not universally applicable. Screwing over everybody else to get ahead might work in the short run, but I cant advise you to do that because then its just detrimental to everybody. Closing the elevator door on somebody can really give you a strong feeling of satisfaction, but if we all start to do that, then everybody is now taking solo elevator rides and everybodys waiting longer too. The whole thing backfires.

So again, to bring it back to the beginning: Im going to die one day. So for now, Im going to enjoy time with people who are important to me. Im going to lie in the sun listening to Eight Days a Week because in the long run, nothing really matters. Theres no reason not to sit back and relax, or even not to try, and Im only going to get older.

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I'm going to die. We are all going to die (But it's fun) - Miscellany News