Street sparklers, expatriate bloggers, and foodseeking
Note: Remember when I used to write long blog posts full of pictures and video? This is one of those, with a little more than usual about food politics. Leave me a comment if you’re into these; changes are afoot at kthread HQ–
About a week ago, I was sitting in a large room in Budapest’s Novotel Centrum, stunned.
Like the fireworks I watched Friday night from a rooftop at George Washington University in D.C. with my good friend and fabulous cook Laura Hertzfeld (display below; thanks, as always, L),
my understanding of global blogging conversations was being exploded as I listened to fiery bursts from the mouths of impassioned activists and advocates from around the world.
I was attending the 2008 Global Voices Summit, a project that my current employer, the Knight Foundation, funds through a contest called the News Challenge for new ideas in local news delivery.
Global Voices cofounder Ethan Zuckerman (find his thoughtful blog posts here) confirmed my sense that was a conference to be experienced in person (though you can watch the conference video archive and read the liveblogs), echoing what my friend David Sasaki, who leads a project called Rising Voices within Global Voices, had told me about the importance of showing up for this community gathering (click the image from David’s Flickr stream below for more of his wonderful photography).
A matrix of interlocking projects, Global Voices and its associated efforts aggregate blog entries, often with images and video, from networks of authors, some of whom are expatriate bloggers, many of whom are exclusive to Global Voices.
With my academic literary background, I used to associate ‘expatriate authors’ with moveable European feasts and endless mountains and rivers of the twentieth century. I now think of individuals like the Global Voices Summit speakers who chronicle events in areas other than where they reside—in some cases because they were imprisoned or their safety endangered in those regions.
What was once a label for American authors registering moral protests, usually of preference rather than imperative, ‘expatriate’ bloggers take on a very real cosmopolitan ownership of their grassroots reports that, as Ethan suggested at the summit referencing the Reverend Wright incident in the Obama campaign, target specific groups and spread beyond intended geographic and temporal audiences into texts referenced by transnational communities of practice.
To draw this down to a personal level, I’m thinking about the spidering effects of online interactions right now in my dissertation research on local networks of food, currency, and shelter.
Two months ago I moved to Miami, and I now happily build online community during the day for Knight Foundation and reside in a magic cottage.
What I didn’t realize when accepting the job was that my new locale is a ‘food desert’ as far as local produce.
Grown to be exported, sitting on docks and hangars beside imported organic vegetables from Mexico and South America (that the Whole Foods franchise near me stickers ‘local’), it seems sustenance of the vegetal varieties easily crosses borders and food miles pile up in a nonsensical mad tea party ride of whirling exchange (a model that needs to be discarded like the statues deposited in Budapest’s social Disneyland, Szoborpark, that I visited recently with author and blogger Antony Loewenstein):
Intended consumption for these foodstuffs remains far from production areas, and the creators, disenfranchised expatriate farmers, we might say, have little ties with the communities where their greens go.
With my beloved local food culture gone missing, a deep sense of longing has emerged for the farmers’ markets that brightened my weekend mornings for the past five or so years.
This past Saturday, I felt buoyant as I returned to the Charlottesville, Virginia farmers’ market, to sellers I know and farms I continue to support.
Freshly dug potatoes and berries I’d never seen before, wine berries, from Planet Diversified;
the first tomatoes from Radical Roots;
peaches and blackberries that wouldn’t last the day
(we shared them at an afternoon picnic)
all reminded me of the ephemeral nature of consumption, be it literal and from the soil or juicy words from those who work around tenuous low-bandwidth connections.
Like the charcoal grill Laura and I veered in and out of alleys in Mt. Pleasant to pick up from grillmaster Cameron this weekend,
we are all, perhaps, chasing down/modifying online tools upon which to set our prose, flip our marinated arguments beside other composed lines of thought.
As we walked back toward Laura’s apartment at the end of a long day of celebrating, I stopped to watch teenagers setting off sparklers between cars.
Far from the bombastic anthems and expensive fireworks we had gaped at earlier, this DIY model is the one I intend to explore—come back for more kthread on how community cred is quietly replacing trumpeted transactions and svelte intervention models are illuminating packets of change…
Leave a comment after the jump–
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Posted Monday, July 7th, 2008, 3:31 am | Filed in Food, Travel. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 7th, 2008 at 4:10 am
This is one of those blogs I must remember to never read on an empty stomach.
The windmill photograph found its perfect place. As did the guitar. I didn’t realize you played.
July 7th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Thanks, David. It was a weekend of tempting food.
I’m happy with the windmill image on the bookcases, and the guitar is easy to pull out of its case there—how the guitar found me is for another post. This is a cottage that should be filled with music…
July 7th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Ah, it’s simply not summer without gorgeous pictures from your forays to the market, K! Fascinating post, and I’m eager to hear more about interconnections between food and community.
July 7th, 2008 at 7:48 am
And it’s not summer without picnics with you, D. Glad you organized us and thank you for introducing me to a new Charlottesville park.
Great to see you this weekend, and I look forward to listening to your radio show in coming weeks and months (1-3 am on WTJU early Saturday mornings, everyone).
David has promised to visit the magic cottage in the fall, and I hope you will too after the California adventure with Ben—
July 7th, 2008 at 8:04 am
I’m a new enough kthread fan that this is one of the first times I’ve seen you use this format. I like it very much.
July 7th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Thanks, Dave. Like your wonderful Friday hehs, I’m trying to carve out a format that fits where kthread is now.
And, I’m definitely flying up for that next Rogue Apron event with you and the East Atlanta cool kids—way to be in that underground loop—
July 7th, 2008 at 8:46 am
We experienced our first wineberries on July Fourth with a Rappahannock County crowd gathered for the fireworks outside Sperryville. Part red raspberry, part mulberry.
July 7th, 2008 at 8:53 am
That’s a perfect firework food, Bud. I really like that they don’t have seeds.
And to think that my friends and I found them in the wild at a Charlottesville park too—here’s to making wineberries a traditional part of 4th celebrations—
July 7th, 2008 at 8:57 am
So lovely to see you and cook amazing things together this weekend. Next time, at the magic cottage!! xoxo
July 7th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Deal. That gives Miami some time for prepare for your fabulousness. And bourbon brownies. Let’s keep talking about New Orleans too—
July 7th, 2008 at 9:23 am
so fabulous! as are you! I miss you but love being a part of your life through gorgeous photos and words.
July 7th, 2008 at 10:13 am
J, thank you, miss you back! Cannot wait to catch up at BlogHer and go on Chicago adventures—
July 7th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
It’s wonderful to hear your voice again, as it were :) What is this magical cottage?! Sounds (and looks) divine. I can empathize with how much you miss fresh produce but know that you will find a way to fill the void. I feel like your life is like this ball of colorful yarn and you are always reaching out for new experiences to weave into the mix - it’s a lot of fun to watch you weave… :)
July 7th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
It’s good to be back, Amanda. Glad that your inspiring posts haven’t abated–Hafiz is such a gift of a new author, thank you for sharing.
You two will have to come visit Miami and see the cottage; until then, I will keep lengthening the kthread skein (adore this metaphor) and, I hope, have more words soon about this place and these foodpaths…
October 30th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
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