"Sure. Where and When?"

I chat with the guards, who are my friends for so many years now as I've been walking and biking and driving to this place for camps and classes and book fairs. I swing past the main building. I hear the blue gravel crunch as I leave the main road and swirl around the lake, herrons and geese and snapping turtles possibly watching me, sweet gum balls and tennis balls mingling on the road's edge.  And then I come upon it, an oasis, a summer garden usually abandoned at this time of year, now productive with lettuces and cilantro and mixed cooking greens, and completely reliant on harvested rain after the recent installation of four rain barrels, thanks to the tireless support of my friend Bob, who responds to any of my emails for help with, "Sure. Where and when?" 

Most recently, three of my best friends helped me thin and transplant (a tedious job made much easier by conversation and somehow a collective agreement to spend a night this June at a monastery with Trappist monks).  These unassuming women also happen to be major players in metro-Atlanta sustainability:

* Judy Knight, marketing director for the Southface Energy Institute;  

* Robin Montri, writer for various publications including one in what is soon to be the newest city in the United States (Peachtree Corners), which will take the title that Dunwoody has been holding for over two years now (click her name above to read my fave article of hers yet); 

* Rebecca Barria, chairperson of Dunwoody's first community garden who has done an outstanding job of advocating for the garden's location stability in the new master plan (which will be voted on tomorrow, and includes the recommendation for the garden to not just stay where it is but to expand).

Joe Hirsch, producer of Youth Radio Atlanta (which "promotes young people's intellectual, creative, and professional growth through education and access to media"--find out more here), and an outspoken citizen activist locally, waters on Tuesdays.   Marilyn, who helped at the new Decatur urban farm with Tomas and me one Saturday, waters on Friday.  And popular FoodShed Planet celebrity, Richard of the Worms, waters on Sundays.

No water is needed today, however.  It rained and raged all night, and while I tossed and turned, the lightning illuminating my room, the thunder rocking the walls, I thought of those rain barrels filling and nitrogen from the air being converted into a form the plants can use, and the harvest we'll have in a few weeks, when I'll email all the hands and hearts that have helped and ask them to come again.  

And I'll surely get back replies that say, "Sure.  Where and when?"

"Sure. Where and When?"

What Woody Allen and Food For My Daughters Have in Common

So my daughter is in her high school play and we're driving there yesterday (me in the passenger seat, no longer gripping, praying, and quoting Woody Allen saying, "Wheat . . . lots of wheat . . . fields of wheat," from Love and Death), when I say to her, "You know how I can work anywhere as long as I have a computer?  Well, I'm sort of thinking maybe next summer, why don't we rent a little place in a village in Ireland or Norway or maybe even Tasmania for a month or so?"

She has her own plans in summer now (this summer is spoken for), and next summer feels like a lifetime away, already her feet in one place and her heart in another, so this idea may get squashed very quickly, I realize.

But then I see her brow raise a bit, and she replies, "Can we do that?"  

As I lay out how I imagine this happening, I see her nodding.  

"This is not theater.  This is life, and we can set the stage however we want!" I throw in, for dramatic flair, I suppose, right before adding, "Stop!  That's a red light!"

She stops (thank you, God).

"But you said I could go in the middle of the intersection if I'm turning," she answers, perplexed.

"On a green light," I correct.

"There's so much to learn," she mutters under her breath.

When I was on maternity leave after this very baby was born, I watched every single Woody Allen movie, and quotes come back at me as I sit there waiting for the light to change, for our lives to change.  "I mean, who would want to live in a place where the only cultural advantage is that you can turn right on a red light?" and "Don't worry. We can walk to the curb from here," both from Annie Hall, quickly followed by "You can't control life. It doesn't wind up perfectly," from Stardust Memories.

We are on borrowed time.  I'm pretty much done teaching her from the driver's seat in life.  And now, I only have left my view from the passenger seat, the telephone poles too close to the road coming at me like missiles, from which to share any last tidbits of motherly wisdom. Or do I?

My friend died almost five years ago from lung cancer, as long-time readers of FoodShed Planet know, having gone from diagnosis to death in the time it takes to have a baby. The last time we talked in depth, just days before she died, I told her it was time to write letters to her daughters and husband, something she had not yet done but somehow managed to do that final weekend.

As my daughter turned the wheel confidently, accelerating to the speed limit in seconds, chatting nonchalantly, merging effortlessly, I realize that I, a professional writer, like the shoemaker who hasn’t made shoes for his children, have not written a letter for my daughters. 

The book I've been writing is my letter.

This book, titled Food for My Daughters, is about what I decided to do when the towers fell, ten years ago this September 11, and how, frankly, everything I can possibly leave my daughters (and you) is related to that conscientious decision.

I don't have an agent.  I don't have a publisher.  I've started too late, perhaps, to use a traditional publisher and still have this book released before 9/11/11.  Automated responses to my emails say, "Thank you for your inquiry.  You should receive a response within three to six months." I've been involved in New Media for so long now that that response feels like it's from the dark ages, or maybe just Radio Days.  Speaking of which, you can hear me read the prologue to the book on my new Internet radio show.

Perhaps you would consider helping me:

* Perhaps you can make an introduction for me--simply forward the book's website link to your friend or relative in the business and maybe say it's worth a look.  

* Don't know anyone but want to help?  Perhaps you'd consider clicking "like" in the left-hand column or clicking an answer on the brief poll on the bottom of the book's site so that potential publishers can see there is a market for a book like this.  

* And, of course, click the button that says you'd like to know when it is published so that you can purchase a copy ( a percentage of all proceeds goes to provide food to those in need).

If there are two things I've learned these last ten years, they are this:  

1. Don't worry about how you're gonna' do something.  Just set the intention, and the world will conspire in your favor.  

2. And don't wait, because we are all on borrowed time.

Or as Woody says in Crimes and Misdemeanors, "Sometimes to have a little good luck is the most brilliant plan." 

What Woody Allen and Food For My Daughters Have in Common

Introducing Food for My Daughters

See here.  Tap in tomorrow with a cup of coffee or tea and I'll tell you what's going on!

Introducing Food for My Daughters

A Voice That Is Complex, Layered, Risotto-Like

Was doing some market research for my book (draft two is now complete, and the book will be released the middle of August, come hell or high water, both of which seem to be coming more frequently around our FoodShed Planet), and working my way rapidly down the section of "food memoirs."  Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant?  Loved that.  Wrote about that. All of Ruth Reichls?  Gosh, I miss Gourmet--don't you? Here's one of my many mentions of it.  Kim Severson's Spoon Fed?  Just finished that one, and wrote very briefly about it here.

Two books spoke to me, and I bought them both.  I started reading them simultaneously, one page of one, then one page of the other.  It's not that I rejected the other.  It's just that one of them kept me reading past that one page and I never stopped.  The Gastronomy of Marriage, by Michelle Maisto, is, I suppose, a story about a woman recently engaged and newly living with her fiance who has to somehow figure out how dinner works in their relationship, day after day after day.  Throw in her Italian heritage and his Chinese one, and her insistence that they share this daily meal, and oh, did I mention that she doesn't eat meat and he does, and it gets a little more complicated than that while still being a thoughtful, simple book filled with profound truths. (Read the introduction here.)

But the storyline, right in my sweet spot of food as metaphor for life, is not what I love most about this book.  What I love most is Michelle.  She is a writer's writer, more like Michael Perry (about whom I somehow managed to write in this post about my lawn--go figure) than any other writer I've read recently.  The kind of writer where I'll read anything and everything she writes from this day on because her words take me to a place of calm and insight and provocation all at once.  My fave line in the entire book, the one about which I've been thinking all week, the one that made me stand outside in my garden the other day and stick my wet-from-rain hand in the air, was this one:

These days I find I've become our relationship's barometer, its dedicated lighthouse keeper, my finger licked and lifted to every shift of mood, change of tone.

I called Michelle and we talked.  This is one of the things I like the most about blogging, by the way, the ability to "scratch that itch" and add dimension to flat words on paper and feel the essence of the whole being behind a book.  Michelle's voice is complex, layered, risotta-like.  And I sensed an immediate calm about her.  She and her husband have a baby now, who is just starting solid foods and Michelle is mashing and blending and freezing little portions in ice cube trays.  She's questioning everything anew--organic, GMOs, the works. Just as I did, all those years ago.  In fact, so much of Michelle's journey reminds me of mine, although the circumstances are different.  But my husband and I moved in together in New York City as well.  I shopped at the Union Square Green Market as well.  I questioned.  I wrestled.  I wrote.  Michelle is coming at it years later, and the marketplace for real food has changed.  Some things are worse (wider industrialization of our national food supply).  Some things are better (wider availability of healthy local choices).  Some things are universal and timeless (a woman nurturing family, friends, home, jobs, dreams, now a baby, and, always, her inner voice).

I asked Michelle why she hadn't updated her blog (which is about shopping at farmers markets all over New York City) lately, and I didn't mean that as a nag (um, did you miss the part about the six-month-old baby?). I meant it as a true curiosity.  You see, Michelle writes the way most people breathe.  And for her not to write seems incomplete somehow, like a meal without bread or salad or perhaps a nice glass of wine.  Missing something essential.  I thought feeding the baby would provide so much endless new material for Michelle, but I got the sense that she didn't want to become just another "baby blogger."  Michelle, don't you get it?  You could write about thimble collections or the location of cracks in the sidewalks in your neighborhood and it would transcend cliche.

I received an email from Michelle written at 11:30 last night. She has written her first blog post since August.  It is about the baby.  And food.  

Welcome back, Michelle.

A Voice That Is Complex, Layered, Risotto-Like

Lured Back!

Am being lured back to write a post by a book that is so beautifully written that the whole world fell silent while I was reading it.  I just got off the phone with the author and am about to shoot a photo of the cover in my garden :)   Come back Sunday morning, with a cup of tea or coffee, and I'll tell you all about it.

Lured Back!

New Life

The asparagus Rod planted is doing well.  And so is he.

New Life