locavores

there is a jungle of tomato plants on my fire escape that i'm proud to have raised from seeds. they are working their way towards bearing food, along with some baby carrot and green bean plants. i also have a container for herbs, with basil, thyme, rosemary and spearmint. i'm very proud of my little garden, glad to look out the window and see the flash of green and excited to watch them spring to life from wet dirt and brown seeds. i'm working on become more conscious of the slow, fickle process of growing food- fighting with the previously friendly squirrels, furiously watering and watching lifeless leaves expand, tracking mud all over the kitchen floor while re-potting- and i find myself loving every moment of it. but as much as i've enjoyed gardening, i've noticed something very worrisome. it is very, very expensive. for as much money as i've spent on containers, dirt, plant food, seeds and cages, i could have bought a summer's worth of tomatoes at the farmer's market. i justify it as my hobby- just like buying music is for grace- but i'm troubled by the (and my!) overtly moralistic rhetoric of "home-grown food is the right/best way to eat."


if you haven't read it yet, the nyt freakonomics blog is a great find. the economic implications of everyday minutia are startlingly explored, and while it's sometimes a little far-fetched, it's always interesting. this post in particular about the sustainability of the home grown food movement is useful in framing questions of class, privilege and foodie culture. moreover, if those of us who can afford to, continue to grow our own food, not only will we lose the opportunity to purchase the variety of food we currently can at cheaper prices, but prices will rise for those who cannot afford the same luxuries. it's unclear to me whether this is a desirable outcome, since clearly food costs are only now starting to reflect true costs of production, and no one is happy, despite all the whining in the food community about big box stores and growers. a typical conundrum in the fractured global marketplace - finding solid economic + cultural evidence that retaining local control/practices/culture is preferable when dispersed and disparate large-scale ventures can offer similar goods and services for a fraction for the cost.

doctrine of signatures

usually i just delete email forwards, but today grace's mom sent me an interesting one outlining how the medicinal use of different foods can be determined by their shape and similarity to parts of the human body. naturally, i was more than skeptical, but noticed at the bottom of the email a line about the "doctrine of signatures".

looking it up, i found that in the middle ages most people believed that the use of certain plants and herbs could be determined by the careful study of their growing location and physical characteristics, the idea obviously complemented by their faith- a divine god leaves a road-map for use within the thing itself. for example, plants bearing a dark red color must be used for treating blood diseases, plants with yellow flowers for jaundice, etc. this is mildly interesting, although i'm sure the email stretched the truth a little far, claiming things such as "a tomato has four chambers and is red. the heart is red and has four chambers. all of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.", which is most likely a case of some facts fitting the theory.

nowadays, we pay very little attention to these sorts of resemblances, mostly thinking them old wives tales. barring the question of their veracity, an interesting point is raised by foucault in the wikipedia article noting that believing in a doctrine of signatures allowed people to organize the symbols in the world around them and extract useful knowledge. actually, we still do this everyday, although with a much more complex set of symbols, and much of modern design is built around the idea that the purpose of the object should be embedded into the form. implicitly the doctrine of signatures has resonated through our cultural conciousness, and we're imitating the same methods in order to be understood.

full text of email

doctrine of signatures