Alice Waters, Michelle Obama, and Wall-E

[babylonsister]

Alice Waters, Michelle Obama, and Wall-E
by Corby Kummer


The photographs of Michelle Obama and schoolchildren digging up the White House lawn on Friday must be making Alice Waters very happy, I thought as soon as I saw them. After all, Waters wouldn't stop talking about her dream of an organic garden on the White House lawn -- not for fifteen years, and not in the face of a blogosphere backlash that became ever harsher in the face of a bad economy and a general attitude of let's-get-real, who-has-time-or-can-afford-this, oh-please-spare-us-the-airy-fairy-platitudes, etc.

But the garden happened, because Michelle Obama decided to make it a priority, and thus the photo opps with the sustainability-minded chef she brought with her from Chicago, Sam Kass, and the fifth-graders from Bancroft Elementary School.


Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

As I suspected, Waters was ecstatic. I reached her in the middle of an orange grove in Ojai, California, where she was attending a fundraiser for the kitchen at the American Academy, in Rome, a successful example of several sustainable-food projects she has audaciously undertaken in the heart of places that don't think America has a thing to teach them in the way of food (a several-year attempt at an organic restaurant for the Louvre never bore fruit). The trip had been long -- it's a six-hour drive from Berkeley, almost two hours from LAX; I didn't ask how she got there -- and she hadn't thought she would be up to it after "one of the greatest days of my life." But the smell of the "incredibly aromatic" orange blossoms and the sight of fat oranges on the same trees with the flowers revived her.

Part of the reason she had "spent all day long in this exhilarated place," she told me, was seeing the children in the pictures. The other cause she won't stop talking about, of course, is putting gardens in schools and trying to get children to understand how vegetables can taste, especially if you grow them yourself.

"I never in my dreams," she told me, "imagined the brilliant stroke of bringing in schoolchildren. This is the kind of ownership that makes it feel so authentic, so right. The message is so easily tainted by celebrity, by landscape architects, historic societies, and all the rest. This seems so home-grown. I don't think anyone can reproach them for planting a victory garden -- though they'll try."

more...

http://food.theatlantic.com/corbys-fresh-feeds/alice-waters-michelle-obama-and-wall-e.php

[SpiralHawk]

1. Read all about it: Food, gardens, and farms much in the news

"Land and food are much in the news this season, and well they should be. The ongoing shocks and shifts in our economic foundations are jolting awake hordes of citizens to the absolute importance of the ways we care for the land and the ways we grow our food.

"Many magazines and newspapers are offering in-depth stories to inform and educate the public about a range of 21st Century agrarian issues that are coming to the forefront, and that will likely occupy the forefront in the years ahead. To support readers in becoming informed, and then taking action, I offer the following roundup of significant snippets and links:"

READ ALL ABOUT IT:

http://thecalloftheland.wordpress.com/