I have been done with Christmas for a long while now.
I can't help it.
For too long I was a willing participant and far too long an unwilling participant in a cultural charade that perpetuates the capitalistic enterprise and tells a twisted version of a story whose time is long past.
As my sense of dis-ease with our consumer culture increased in my early to middle parenting years I found myself questioning my own role in Christmas. We decided as a household back then that we would continue decorating, baking, shopping but do so more mindfully.
Many years have passed since that early decision to practice a more mindful Christmas but still the consumer excess grows madly around us. And with no apparent stopping mechanism beyond the tipping points of environmental collapse and an economy in which the rich get richer and the poor get increasingly poorer.
I simply see no place in my life for what Christmas has become. Nor do I believe we are living in a world that can afford for us to continue to celebrate this (and many other time honoured traditions still held sacred) in the manner in which we collectively do so.
I am done with Christmas in all its mindless excess.
Yet please do not be misconstrued.
The heart of Christmas I still hold dear within me.
I adored Christmas as a child and a young woman. It represented the joy and sense of connection I found in the faith tradition I practiced at the time. I welcomed my prayer vigil I held for myself each advent evening as a time of quiet reflection on the first Christmas and its relevance to my own life. I continue to value the depth of a December evening and its call to quiet and honouring what the darkness offers. I realize how contradictory the consumer culture of Christmas and its inherent busyness is to this call I feel on early winter nights.
And yet, taking the time to honour the return of the son/sun as a means of walking from darkness to the light has brought me to an new understanding of the birth story and what it means to me.
Celebrating the birth of a radical whose life demanded we choose terrifically inclusive love
and the beauty of simplicity over amassing possessions is something I am all for. So too with opening our hearts and minds with a childlike sense of wonder to the natural world and all its offerings. But what
might that honouring truly look like? Do you think it would honestly
look anything like the madness that we have turned Christmas into in our
modern lives?
A few years ago when I first noticed the local flyers in mid November announcing their upcoming Black Friday sales I knew that the takeover of our hearts and minds towards full scale American capitalism was underway. Black Friday, Cyber Monday , even Giving Tuesday-- all American terms entering our Canadian lexicon. And to my dismay I saw people all around me seeming to adopt them without question.
It was then that I really felt the scream enlarge within me.
"I want out!"
I am tired of paying homage to a tradition which generates so much waste and wanton greed.
I am tired of seeing the same scenes play out over and over, year after year in the stores and online retailers.
I want an equalizing factor to emerge from our collective hearts and minds. I want to envision a radical new way to more justly secure objects to meet our basic needs for food and clothing and shelter.
I want to crack my heart wide open to the suffering of this beautiful fractured world of fear and wonder. I want release from the ties that bind me to old ways so that the more beautiful world I know is possible can become real.
I want this for my children and their children and all the creatures, soil and waters of this world more than I want a world of Santa Claus and consumer make believe.
All I truly want for Christmas is a real, living and breathing healthy earth. A world that we live in harmony with and whose support systems we choose to recognize and honour. I want to co-create a world freed from reckless inequalities and the desperate suffering of children and animals. I want peace.
When I close my eyes and settle my heart and mind I can already see a new world emerging from the dust of the collapse of our modern lifestyles. I can see it in the willingness of others to begin to craft that world from the precious clay of their own living.
But what am I truly willing to give up in order to help birth a new era? How can I celebrate Christmas with my dear family in a way that honours the truth of what I feel within and what I see before us?
A few starting points to consider regarding celebrating Christmas in this era of climate change:
Love is greater than fear. Christmas can be a time to remember that Jesus was the King of Love. He welcomed the suffering and marginalized and asked that those who were to follow in his footsteps do the same. Practice an act of radical lovingkindness for self and other and for this broken world. And remember to love the earth!
Consider the well being of the environment in all your purchases. Do you need to buy processed food wrapped in single use plastic, or wrapped in plastic at all? Has the food you have in your cart been ethically sourced? Have you considered adding a vegetarian or better yet, *vegan dish to your holiday meal? Rethink whether a gift item is truly of benefit to you or your family or friends? Can you purchase second hand goods as gifts, craft from homemade or support local artisans in their craft? Can you support a local farmers market or CSA for your Christmas celebration?
Who are the disenfranchised, the marginalized in your community? Can you give to a local charity, food bank , environmental group or women's shelter? Can you welcome to your table those in need of food and warmth and friendship?
Give the gift of presence. Practice the act of engaging in presence with those whom you love, with nature, and watch as your world beautifully expands.
Joy can be found in so very many places beyond what the sales flyers and endless ads try to sell us. In caring for the earth, for self and finding room in our hearts for welcoming others we can bring a simplicity back to our lives which is so lacking in this modern age.
Happy Winter Solstice! Happy Mindful Christmas!
Much Peace and Joy to you and may the darkness help you better appreciate the Light.
Love Jill
*We are living in a world which holds the real potential of seeing the extinction of large mammals in the wild in the very near future given current rate of demise as per the WWF Living Planet Index. Going vegan is considered to be quite possibly the sanest response to this massively difficult to compute extrapolation.
https://www.preventyearzero.org/take-action
Sending out a huge tip of my hat and my heart to my favourite vegan, my oldest daughter Maria. Her incredible love of animals and desire to nurture all life inspired her own shift from vegetarianism to veganism. Her dietician declared that she should write a book on how to properly, healthfully be a vegan or teach classes at least. She has chosen to create an instagram account called thisnourishedvegan which she has her brother Lucas do food photography for. Her cooking and baking is wildly delicious and always inspiring. Kudos to you dear Maria for leading our family in the direction of veganism through your quiet and beautiful dedication to your craft.
Wednesday 12 December 2018
Thursday 22 November 2018
To Love this World
Mount Herbert
November 21st, 2018
The air is blinking thick with flurries so we pull our hoods up to ease the worst of it, the best of it we breathe in, a freshness too soon, although strangely welcome.
It is only November 21st and we are walking on a trail covered with a six inch depth of snow, third snowfall this week and each a measure to be reckoned with.
At winter's height last year the trail was never worse to walk than this and yet we do not mind
because we are back walking a trail we love so well and after too long a time away--we can't help but feel so alive!
Interestingly the last time we were here it was too sweltering to make it far.
Mid summer's heat had lingered late, the sun ablaze and air as humid as the tropics
threatened to send us back to the air conditioned comfort of our car--
but in the car, windows up we deny so much more than heat.
We deny connection to the buzz of insect wing and drum of amphibian's song,
we deny the fragrant scent of sweet meadow grass and tender sway of roadside wildflowers
and in doing so we deny ourselves.
Instead, that fiercely hot day we chose to linger and we noted Bobolink's of quite a number busy in the meadow--their total flock unusually large and so despite the heat we stopped a moment to take it in before we continued languid but soul-heartened back to the car.
Now, in the snow squall so thick we cast our eyes downward, we know full well we could have chosen the warmth and comfort of our cozy home but instead we walk downcast
and stumble as almost underfoot wooly bear caterpillars leap out at us from the pure white snow.
Their tiny black and orange bodies so delicate and still we think they are dead but upon closer inspection realize they are indeed still alive. Curled in a tiny ball on my gloved hand I move them to the bushes near the ditch.
What resilience in the face of unpredictable weather--we could do so well.
Further along we turn off the trail and are stopped in our snowy tracks by a deafening thunderous cacophony of geese as a flock of thousands lifts off from a field a distance beyond the trail.
Breathtaking,
the power of their wings, their voice, their unison centers and connects us in the beautifully lyrical way that nature, like music and art, and poetry, mystically can.
We leave the trail as their flock parts way, half heading east and the other west, and as we walk down to the pond we find it swelled to overflowing while two muskrats make themselves known with their busy attentiveness to their own lives--such graceful, playful, fluid creatures.
We pause and be still in our own silence,
feeling the briskness of the snowy air, flakes landing, fleeting, on our faces as we
listen to the rush of pond waters flowing over a dam to the brook below us.
Standing in the power of such awareness we know we are being graced.
And in this graciousness we are filled with something you simply cannot buy... the contentment of true presence...and the beauty, peace and joy and love it so generously affords us.
The economics of this world demand that we rush onward and pay little heed to the natural world of which we are an intrinsic part. Walking in the quietude of a snowy wooded brook side trail feels like an act of rebellion against the digitization and commercialization of human life. With our attentiveness we forge a rebellion in our own hearts towards re-connection with all we know to be right and true and worthy.
The desire to be well and a part of the living wildness of the soil and air and waters of this little Island we adore, swells large within us not unlike the swelling of the pond waters and the song of the wild geese who gather and sing despite the hunter's season.
The hurting of the world demands our song.
Time is passing and we can choose to pay attention. Future generations depend on our willingness to reconsider our lifestyles and model re- conciliation with self and other, with constructed and natural environs. With heart and soul and body and the Earth.
There is a whole entire world whose delicate balance is being challenged by the disruptive and greedy ways of human enterprise. Courageous hearts and minds can choose to bear witness to the truths as they are seen before us. In doing so we tell the story of the world as it is and with leaps of faith as it might be imagined to be. Whole and well and loved.
I want to tell my children that the future looks bright for them, as they are bright young people with hearts wide opened to art, music, love and nature. But it is a difficult time to be growing up in the world. It is a difficult time to be an adult in this tumultuous era too.
The one truth I hold fast to is that their willingness to love this world, broken and fragmented and disappearing as it is, will never be a wasted effort.
For to love this world is its own reward. Love is rather beautiful like that.
Happy sixteenth birthday Nov 21st to my son Lucas--cherished child adored by his mom and dad and two loving sisters for his kind and gentle ways, his humour and his willingness to always lend a helping hand.
A keen eyed nature observer with an artistic touch in all he does, Lucas is a storyteller who uses photographs and canvasses to show us how things are in his mind's eye. I have a faith in his art that I do not have in the dominant capitalistic system which overlords itself onto our lives at every turn. His ability to utilize art to convey what so many seem to miss on their daily rounds absorbed in the minutiae of their own lives is a gift to the world.
But then again I am just his mother.
Wishing you a deep sense of your own connectedness to this blessed Earth.
XO
Jill
Thank you Lucas for the bobolink photo and the idea and act of yesterday's Mount Herbert walk.
November 21st, 2018
The air is blinking thick with flurries so we pull our hoods up to ease the worst of it, the best of it we breathe in, a freshness too soon, although strangely welcome.
It is only November 21st and we are walking on a trail covered with a six inch depth of snow, third snowfall this week and each a measure to be reckoned with.
At winter's height last year the trail was never worse to walk than this and yet we do not mind
because we are back walking a trail we love so well and after too long a time away--we can't help but feel so alive!
Interestingly the last time we were here it was too sweltering to make it far.
Mid summer's heat had lingered late, the sun ablaze and air as humid as the tropics threatened to send us back to the air conditioned comfort of our car--
but in the car, windows up we deny so much more than heat.
We deny connection to the buzz of insect wing and drum of amphibian's song,
we deny the fragrant scent of sweet meadow grass and tender sway of roadside wildflowers
and in doing so we deny ourselves.
Instead, that fiercely hot day we chose to linger and we noted Bobolink's of quite a number busy in the meadow--their total flock unusually large and so despite the heat we stopped a moment to take it in before we continued languid but soul-heartened back to the car.
Now, in the snow squall so thick we cast our eyes downward, we know full well we could have chosen the warmth and comfort of our cozy home but instead we walk downcast
and stumble as almost underfoot wooly bear caterpillars leap out at us from the pure white snow.
Their tiny black and orange bodies so delicate and still we think they are dead but upon closer inspection realize they are indeed still alive. Curled in a tiny ball on my gloved hand I move them to the bushes near the ditch.
What resilience in the face of unpredictable weather--we could do so well.
Further along we turn off the trail and are stopped in our snowy tracks by a deafening thunderous cacophony of geese as a flock of thousands lifts off from a field a distance beyond the trail.
Breathtaking,
the power of their wings, their voice, their unison centers and connects us in the beautifully lyrical way that nature, like music and art, and poetry, mystically can.
We leave the trail as their flock parts way, half heading east and the other west, and as we walk down to the pond we find it swelled to overflowing while two muskrats make themselves known with their busy attentiveness to their own lives--such graceful, playful, fluid creatures.
We pause and be still in our own silence,
feeling the briskness of the snowy air, flakes landing, fleeting, on our faces as we
listen to the rush of pond waters flowing over a dam to the brook below us.
Standing in the power of such awareness we know we are being graced.
And in this graciousness we are filled with something you simply cannot buy... the contentment of true presence...and the beauty, peace and joy and love it so generously affords us.
The economics of this world demand that we rush onward and pay little heed to the natural world of which we are an intrinsic part. Walking in the quietude of a snowy wooded brook side trail feels like an act of rebellion against the digitization and commercialization of human life. With our attentiveness we forge a rebellion in our own hearts towards re-connection with all we know to be right and true and worthy.
The desire to be well and a part of the living wildness of the soil and air and waters of this little Island we adore, swells large within us not unlike the swelling of the pond waters and the song of the wild geese who gather and sing despite the hunter's season.
The hurting of the world demands our song.
Time is passing and we can choose to pay attention. Future generations depend on our willingness to reconsider our lifestyles and model re- conciliation with self and other, with constructed and natural environs. With heart and soul and body and the Earth.
There is a whole entire world whose delicate balance is being challenged by the disruptive and greedy ways of human enterprise. Courageous hearts and minds can choose to bear witness to the truths as they are seen before us. In doing so we tell the story of the world as it is and with leaps of faith as it might be imagined to be. Whole and well and loved.
I want to tell my children that the future looks bright for them, as they are bright young people with hearts wide opened to art, music, love and nature. But it is a difficult time to be growing up in the world. It is a difficult time to be an adult in this tumultuous era too.
The one truth I hold fast to is that their willingness to love this world, broken and fragmented and disappearing as it is, will never be a wasted effort.
For to love this world is its own reward. Love is rather beautiful like that.
Happy sixteenth birthday Nov 21st to my son Lucas--cherished child adored by his mom and dad and two loving sisters for his kind and gentle ways, his humour and his willingness to always lend a helping hand.
A keen eyed nature observer with an artistic touch in all he does, Lucas is a storyteller who uses photographs and canvasses to show us how things are in his mind's eye. I have a faith in his art that I do not have in the dominant capitalistic system which overlords itself onto our lives at every turn. His ability to utilize art to convey what so many seem to miss on their daily rounds absorbed in the minutiae of their own lives is a gift to the world.
But then again I am just his mother.
Wishing you a deep sense of your own connectedness to this blessed Earth.
XO
Jill
Thank you Lucas for the bobolink photo and the idea and act of yesterday's Mount Herbert walk.
Wednesday 31 October 2018
All Hallow's Eve--A Heart's Transformation from Fear and Confusion
In Oct 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) released its most recent report on the state of the climate globally.
Its prognosis was startling in its immediacy. Human societies must act now in
order to stall the most grievous effects of increased warming of our
planet. And urgently so. They gave us a timeline of 10-12 years to get our collective acts together.
But how when we are hapless victims and perpetrators both?And what is there to do in the face of such overwhelming
and urgent news?
I have spent a lot of time
thinking about this sort of thing and personally had no idea where to begin beyond those
measures my family and I had already put in place.
I was beginning to be given to
despair.
I mentioned this despair to a person I admire greatly and
who marches gracefully to the tune of his own heart, his very life work a lovesong to trees and the natural world as a whole. He said to me that for him,
hope is prerequisite to breathing. It is what keeps him moving forward. And he trusts in the goodness of others. And he can't help but bear witness to the beauty all around.
And I understood his words as though they were my own.
Beauty of the natural world exists to sustain us so that we can protect the
earth. A kind of symbiosis beyond the obvious life supports systems the earth
affords us with—it is a symbiosis of the heart.
And so I took a breath and held it all lightly trusting that a shift in my own heart would occur.
And then
last night this awakening happened:
I knew to wait for this moment, trusting that it would
arrive without even being certain how exactly it would present itself but that
I would somehow know when it did.
Tenderhearted awareness--that is how I choose to respond to
the immense suffering of the world. With the tenderness I offer my own children
in their times of suffering and confusion.
This too I offer the world.
I have been lost as of late in the uncertainty and confusion I see
around me. In the midst of dire climate change warnings and painful and confusing
political and social upheaval I have been drifting like an un-moored boat from unknown shore to unknown shore in
search of a sheltered harbour. I have identified too deeply with the confusion and pain of the world,
internalizing it to the point of becoming it.
But tonight on my yoga mat I arrived at the harbour I had
been searching for in vain as though it was outside my bones and breath. My bones and breath. And all I had to do was lay them down prostrate before the world, on my own living room floor in order to find what I had been looking for.
I arrived back home in myself with the same sense of
being received as my own little two year old self did at my grandparent's upon
my announcing I AM HERE...I arrived at a place of humility and acceptance and welcoming and love.
This world
is swirling and twirling about in a vast sea of space with room enough for all
possibilities to unfold. Mine and yours included.
In my own fear and confusion I had not allowed any of the
immensity of that vast sea of possibility to truly permeate my thoughts and actions.
Space---and time---those strange companions that my unusual brain has struggled
with for so long came together within me last evening in a dance of joy so profound that I realized that I do not have to do or be anything or anyone
other than who I already am.
Nor do you.
The simple act of being, of existing and
bearing witness to this world is all that is asked of me and any of us.
Be and bear witness. That simple.
And I came to realize once again that when I fall open-hearted into the arms of that vast expanse of universe I can trust that my very existence
contains the fullness which I so earnestly seek.
I need look no further, it is there--here-- in the moment
of my relinquishing from the stranglehold of self. The very act of trusting in the
larger processes at work and bearing witness to the unfolding is all that is asked of me.
Of any of us.
Of any of us.
Compassion, non judging, a field of love so wide that even
to call it a field is restricting.To call it love restricting too. That field of awareness which the poet Rumi so beautifully spoke of is where I found myself. Conjoined inseparably to the nameless void containing all is what I had become.
When I fall into that place of trust I fall out of all the
things in life which hold me back--fear, judgement, a sense of lack,
resentment, exhaustion and I fall open-heartedly into an awareness so spacious that there is
room for everything to unfold.
Falling into the unknown can be a life changing experience.
There are endless parallels and portals into my yoga mat experience in the natural world if only we have the hearts and minds to see them.
Over the past several days I have had the great pleasure of
watching the hardwoods near our house release their leaves. The way they swirl
off the tree is an ecstasy itself.
The first day I noticed our Maple letting go
there was nary a breath of wind to incite the riot of leaves as they took leave and fell. I watched rather breathless, knowing that this was their moment--that
the urge to fall had grown so huge within them that nothing could hold them
back.
I felt honoured to watch their little copper faces
catch the morning sun as they downturned swirling towards the still green grass.
And I felt a little heartsick too.
Time passing before my very eyes and almost
frantically so.
I tried for a few minutes to choose a leaf and watch it make
its way to the ground but I kept being interrupted by another and then another
leaf. I noticed my heart rate beginning to increase to match the madness of the
swirling and had to pause to catch my own breath.
Each departure so singularly beautiful I felt as though I
just might cry.
All of a sudden these leaves were my beloveds; dear friends
whose life span I had witnessed from bud to leaf and whose season of life was
waning, dry and muted now in late October.
A fullness come to pass.
And it came to me upon my mat this evening after my own dry patch of soulless disconnection to my life that I
must hold it all with tenderhearted awareness.
The suffering in my own household, the pain, the
uncertainty and confusion. The tiredness, the fear, the forgetting to be kind
to self before all else so that I can be kind to others.
And in that moment my heart grew to accommodate the whole
world and all the suffering parts with such a measure of compassion and clarity
and purity that despite my tiredness and the late hour I knew I had
to write this out to share with you.
The paths through the darkness of this era in which we
live are there before us if only we have hearts that are brave and willing
enough to trust in their very existence.
The paths will show their way through our very willingness to act out of
kindness and open-heartedness. They will be revealed to the degree in which we are
willing to look with truly open eyes of awareness and hearts and minds of acceptance.
We are victims and perpetrators both but there is no one person to
blame for where we have found ourselves. Multitudes and eons have brought us to
this moment in the universes' expression.
But we are here and this is the truth before us and so we
must bear witness and act accordingly with a loving responsiveness we would
offer our own beloveds in their time of need.
After all, we are all of the same
flesh and breath and sea and bark and bone and petal and rock and crawl and
dance and slither and swoosh of falling leaf.
There is no separation.
We are
one.
And so I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing to fear
and everything to gain from our willingness to tend to this world with a mother's tenderness
for her suffering child, with the graciousness and humility of the wise, with
the kindness and urgency we would wish for our own healing and wellness.
The task before us is a large one but I know we are up to it-- otherwise we would not have been called to do so.
In love and beauty.
Thanks for reading,
Jill
Friday 31 August 2018
Late August Clouds
I suppose there are any number of things I could prattle on about this last August day but I choose what has chosen me; clouds.
I must confess that it is difficult for me to even sit here for these few moments to compose this brief piece as the sky is calling to me in whispers of azure and cyan with brilliant, slow moving grey-white clouds like pearly everlasting drifting on the cliff edge breeze.
I am planning on driving east today to Monticello where my parents spend the summer on their shore frontage of my grandparents old farm. I will drop our son off to spend the weekend birding with my parents and my uncle and visiting with other relatives keen to savour the long weekend's offerings.
We will likely scope out blackberries to pick and take a stroll on the sandstone beach below the cape before the girls, and my husband and I return home this evening.
But in order to do any of this, if I am to drive an hour east, I must first write out my strange intoxication with the sky on this last day of August. It feels as though it is calling me to honour the truths of my present by being in the present and witnessing how even the clouds upon the sky are ever changing. Breathe with me, breathe with this.
My dear sister Janice has returned to her family on the west coast after spending the bulk of the summer here with us. Bidding her farewell is always a difficult thing for me. Our relationship has often been a complicated one--we are sisters after all--but I have always adored her and she has always adored me. Being the two oldest with two children the same age we share similar life experiences even though we live a continent apart for most of the year. This summer our hearts crossed a lot of bridges to meet each other in a place of openness and acceptance. We witnessed firsthand the fabulous reality that we can become anew in each new moment so long as we grant each other that breathing, growing heart space.
Yesterday she spent most of her day flying across the sky, through clouds not unlike those which I am gazing upon today. I am gazing this morning as though bewitched by their splendour and I am reminded that we ourselves are like the clouds. Far too often we think of ourselves as fixed entities--I am Jill and you are You-- but really we are fluid like the ocean and the sky. We are waves of light and love, we are shape shifters in our mind's eye and co creators of the world in which we live. The beauty of the clouds is not unlike you. It is you.
Miss you already dear Janice but welcoming September into my heart one cloud moving breath at at time.
Thank you Janice! Thank you August. Thank you sky--for being You!
xoxo
Intoxicated by clouds, but now ready to let them go...
Jill
Photo taken by Lucas MacCormack
Monticello, PEI 2017
I must confess that it is difficult for me to even sit here for these few moments to compose this brief piece as the sky is calling to me in whispers of azure and cyan with brilliant, slow moving grey-white clouds like pearly everlasting drifting on the cliff edge breeze.
I am planning on driving east today to Monticello where my parents spend the summer on their shore frontage of my grandparents old farm. I will drop our son off to spend the weekend birding with my parents and my uncle and visiting with other relatives keen to savour the long weekend's offerings.
We will likely scope out blackberries to pick and take a stroll on the sandstone beach below the cape before the girls, and my husband and I return home this evening.
But in order to do any of this, if I am to drive an hour east, I must first write out my strange intoxication with the sky on this last day of August. It feels as though it is calling me to honour the truths of my present by being in the present and witnessing how even the clouds upon the sky are ever changing. Breathe with me, breathe with this.
My dear sister Janice has returned to her family on the west coast after spending the bulk of the summer here with us. Bidding her farewell is always a difficult thing for me. Our relationship has often been a complicated one--we are sisters after all--but I have always adored her and she has always adored me. Being the two oldest with two children the same age we share similar life experiences even though we live a continent apart for most of the year. This summer our hearts crossed a lot of bridges to meet each other in a place of openness and acceptance. We witnessed firsthand the fabulous reality that we can become anew in each new moment so long as we grant each other that breathing, growing heart space.
Yesterday she spent most of her day flying across the sky, through clouds not unlike those which I am gazing upon today. I am gazing this morning as though bewitched by their splendour and I am reminded that we ourselves are like the clouds. Far too often we think of ourselves as fixed entities--I am Jill and you are You-- but really we are fluid like the ocean and the sky. We are waves of light and love, we are shape shifters in our mind's eye and co creators of the world in which we live. The beauty of the clouds is not unlike you. It is you.
Miss you already dear Janice but welcoming September into my heart one cloud moving breath at at time.
Thank you Janice! Thank you August. Thank you sky--for being You!
xoxo
Intoxicated by clouds, but now ready to let them go...
Jill
Photo taken by Lucas MacCormack
Monticello, PEI 2017
Sunday 12 August 2018
Where I'm From
Pin point it on a space-time map:
1:05am
Friday,
August 17th, 1973
Charlottetown,
Prince
Edward Island,
Canada,
Planet
Earth,
Earth-Moon
System,
Solar
System,
Milky
Way Galaxy,
Local
Group,
Virgo
Supercluster,
The
Observable Universe.
One final laborious push and I appeared in the maternity ward of the Charlottetown Hospital where both my paternal grandmother and my mother had trained and worked as Roman Catholic nurses.
Me, Gillian Marie McGuigan, first born of five,their singular Gold Cup and Saucer parade girl I was that day.
My mom, nurse angel, is a
creative, loving homemaker and lifelong learner;
my dad, the endless provider, a loving,
quiet and detailed problem solver/computer guy extraordinaire.
Both birders, so artistic and so hard working.
But that is not the whole truth of where I’m from.
I’m from the same myriad of places which each in their own way have brought us all into existence.
Trace your fingers on the bark of an evergreen nearest you and you will feel the rough and willing touch of ancestral longing. A longing which is etched into each of us for the preservation of a species that was perhaps not ever destined for more than a maybe answer to where we are headed and, despite science and religion's best efforts, to why we are here.
If three hundred years ago you had told my ancestors in Ireland, Scotland and Africa that I would be sitting here today laced with cellular remembrances of their homelands, same starlight in my eyes as theirs, yet looking and living as I do, no doubt they would think you crazy.
But I am here and I did come from their distant histories by an entanglement of story lines that only a skilled author could render.
And what if someone then was told we’d know where humankind found its origins? And also, that during the same relative time/ space as that wild discovery, too many descendants of those humans who lived so desperately close to Earth would be at least partly to blame for the ridiculous mess we are in today as perpetrators of greed and a foolhardy disconnection with same Earth.
Would they have thought you crazy?
Do you think we are crazy now?
And what is crazy anyhow?
Climate change and a sixth mass extinction?
Guns, warfare, inequality, grinding poverty, endless growth?
Measuring our worth according to GDP?
Measuring worth at all?
And what of
opti-genetics on transgenic mice,
Nano-robots fighting cancer,
Reality TV in a plasticized world?
How about falling so wildly in love with an idea that you would walk off the face of the earth just to see if the idea might float?
What about falling in love, period? Is that crazy?
Where I am from is two people who met by chance, fell hopelessly in love, and in time, decided to hop in the sack together. I am the end result of one of those encounters; a kind of give and take only possible through courage and naivety combined. That and the biochemistry of hormones.
Where I am from is truly a strange and beautiful place with a graceful and stumbling quality about it. A world so full it can scarcely contain it all:
Family and community and brokenness and wholesomeness too.
Wonder and laughter, love and fear and bliss,
Wide, bright expanses and dark cramped quarters, and little known
wounds in far away lands and far back times. And kindness, do not forget kindness.
I am from small talk in small towns on an achingly beautiful little bit of fading away sandstone in a great big, turbulent sea.
I am from some sort of wonderful orchestral wavelength that an ancient part of me knows is truth and beauty.
That and the unequivocal forbearance of spirals and fractals as well as the survival of heartbreak and other dis-ease.
And if I thought any of it was especially special I would have said so already.
Except I did.
My mom and my dad are ultimately where I am from.
That and an endless universe of possibilities
of which I am both one and many.
Jill MacCormack
http://www.johnagowan.org/elements.html
Africa cover by Weezer
Thursday 26 July 2018
PEI Food Island-- a critique from 2015
A piece I wrote three years ago in response to the PEI gov'ts release of the document promoting PEI as the Food Island:http://www.foodislandpei.ca/docs/Food-Island-Strategic-Plan.pdf
The Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan, stacked high with a poster worthy roster of industry leaders, has not taken a visionary view of how we grow and share food on PEI. Thanks to this fundamental lack of true vision, all Islanders should be deeply concerned. After all, it is our air, soil, waters and communities which could be further degraded in the pursuit of global markets for farm and fish products with our tax payer dollars funding the venture.
Although it contains all the important gloss and business lingo to seem progressive, the Strategic Plan has failed to be progressive in the critical arenas of true environmental stewardship and community building. The creators of the plan have grossly failed to acknowledge the current environmental and social realities which agri-business has wreaked upon our land and waters here. This is evidenced in their repeated presentation of PEI as a land of "pristine" environmental conditions perfect for basing an economy of food upon.
Throughout its history, PEI has been recognized for its distinctive food and agricultural advantages. Celebrated as a “million acre farm” for its red fertile soil, temperate climate, clean water, and pristine environment, its generations of farmers, fishers and food processors have secured a foundation in food production and manufacturing that has fundamentally shaped the provincial economy. This activity has transformed the Island landscape into a pastoral setting recognized by tourists all over the world.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
Concerning as well is the language utilized in the section on areas of concern regarding environmental restrictions and how they limit development:
Environmental concerns related to the food industry also have an impact. Environmental regulations in a province with the highest population density in Canada adds to the cost of production. For small companies, compliance requires time and considerable resources.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
Failure to acknowledge large scale agriculture's role in fish kills and soil degradation is not a forward thinking approach to industry renewal. Inherent in any re-configuring should be a long term plan for soil renewal, watershed improvement and a phasing out of all growing, producing and packaging practices which degrade the very resources which the Food Island plan hopes to promote and develop.
Prince Edward Island has enjoyed widespread recognition for its unique scenic landscapes, pristine waters and clean environment, promoted through years of tourism marketing.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
And just because the PEI Tourism Industry chooses to ignore the reality of the environmental crisis we are experiencing with our air, soil and waters here in order to promote the notion of unspoiled, purity of place that tourists desire, does not mean that this is the actual state of our environment.
Their strategic plan is designed to rely exclusively on competition within the global marketplace while acknowledging that globalization has limited the marketing and sales opportunities for small scale producers and packagers who do not or cannot play the game the way the global market and big business dictates.
Globalization is an asset and intricate factor. It creates vital opportunities to meet the evolving food demands of the world’s emerging economies and high-growth areas, including Asia, as incomes and protein consumption rise. Successful global supply chains are being forged with partners beyond national boundaries, enhancing value but also limiting options for smaller growers and food processors who fall outside the group.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
While paying lip service to climate change and the mass exodus of young Islanders elsewhere to find work as realities that need to be considered, the plan fails to fully recognize the driving force that globalization is in creating both of those concerns. Further, it demonstrates no real understanding of the complexities involved. It also does not consider the role large scale production of food has played in the disappearance of small family farms and the decline of rural communities.
A truly forward thinking society would know intuitively that creating an ideal based on competition is one which is bound to create a similar world as that in which we are currently living; a world entrenched in the inequitable sharing of resources and resource development driven by greed rather than by need.
"...too often, Island stakeholders see each other as competitors rather than partners, but partnership is what is needed to rise to the challenge of global trade.What is needed is a model of “co-opetition” or compet-
itive collaboration"
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
Competitive collaboration is still rooted in competition and co-opetition is a strategy which relies heavily on the fundamental relationship of trust between players. Has the relationship between Island farmers and agri-business ever truly favoured the farmer? Not sure that large scale agri-business has ever proven itself trustworthy enough to make me want to shake on any deals. And who are the Island stakeholders referred to in the above quote? Are they even Islanders?
Is there room for sustainability, equality and sharing of resources in the industry proposed, government supported Food Island Partnership, or is it one which is dominated by a "cream of the crop" mentality?
“I love the story of the Island. You can’t find a more pristine environment to grow a potato or raise a steer. The Island is an isolated wonder of nature.”
-Chef Mark McEwan, Head Judge “Top Chef Canada,” The
Food Network, Toronto restaurateur and cookbook author.
I certainly do not see Islanders benefiting from taking a singular approach to product or resource development such as creating a best-of PEI services or product line. Just as seed potatoes and fox farming are not standards of excellence which Islanders should aspire to return to, neither should we aspire to create an Island economy that sees the best of what we grow and produce being shipped to foreign markets. As a small Island very dependent on imports we are the perfect place to create an economy of scale that sees us growing our food and teaching each other the most healthful and economic utilization of the food resources we produce. We could both employ and teach and feed each other in the process. Growing and preparing healthful foods could become part of our curriculum from grade school upwards. Already small scale producers here are reaping the benefit of the eat local movement. So are Island consumers. The Food Island Partnership doesn't see it this way. They think all Islanders should be brand ambassadors for an export product line that they both work to produce, and promote.
Other provinces have “buy local” programs. While successful in provinces with a large consumer base, the impact in a province with an internal marketplace of 145,000 people will be limited. What will have enormous impact occurs when 145,000 Islanders decide to become ambassadors for PEI food products. In the age of social media and the importance of credibility in marketing, it is crucial that a population demonstrate pride in, and knowledge of, its own products, in order to successfully export them.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
Instead of being progressive, this would set the stage for us to further become a banana republic by laying the groundwork for the development of underdevelopment of both our economy and culture, too much of which has already occurred and/or is still occurring.
"Underdevelopment is not lack of or insufficient development, as many people tend to think. It is a product or subproduct of development. Underdevelopment derives inevitably from the colonial or neo-colonial forms of economical exploitation which still imposes itself in many regions of our planet." JosuedeCastro.com
We are living on a food insecure Island in a very hungry world. We simply cannot afford to create a "best of" Island products for export as the Food Island Strategic Plan would like to see happen.
"Still more deadly then severe and complete hunger is the phenomenon of chronic or partial hunger, because of its social and economical effects which silently undermine countless populations around the world." JosuedeCastro.com
Unless, of course, built into the Food Island schema, were policies to ensure better soil and water management and to see to it that a decent percentage of the food produced remain on the Island in order to feed hungry Islanders. But the overall tone of the document does not promote this.
One step in a new direction might be the implementation of a food surcharge as proposed by Island farmer Margie Loo.
The small surcharge could be levied on foods purchased which were not grown organically so as to to create a fund which could help encourage better soil management and reward those farmers on a sliding scale who are doing the expensive work of trying to improve soil quality while growing their crops. http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/News/Local/2015-03-07/article-4068555/Island-farmer-says-P.E.I.-needs-farm-surcharge-system/1
A change of consciousness is urgently needed. One that will bring about a new, more equitable reality--not a simple re-packaging of a way of being as the Food Island Partnership plan proposes. This way of farming has already contributed to the decrease in our ability to feed ourselves-- and to rural as well as environmental decline-- why continue supporting such a system?
Setting our sights or standards higher is another starting point, but not if it is simply to make us more desirable players on the global market. The global market is the problem--not the solution. It encourages a capitalist mindset and one which further ingrains the belief that natural resources exist to be developed and that nature is something over which humans should have domination. The global market place is why we have hunger in the world, is why our soils are depleted to the point of being almost barren on our Island, is why our well water is increasingly becoming less drinkable and is why there is decline in rural communities.
The set of beliefs which underlies our current economic system and upon which the proposed Food Island Partnership relies is the notion that once we create the best products, the bigger markets will want to do business with us and we will have a more secure economy. I don't see this as a food secure, job secure, or environmentally friendly way of doing business. This story line has been played out on the Island stage for far too many years and has served only to denude our land and rob our peoples of a way of life which once promoted a sense of community and caring. de Castro saw this same story being played out years ago in Brazil.
"One of the best regions to observe as test ground for our theories is the sugar-producing northeast of Brazil, with its typical natural environment. The life of its soil, water, plants and even its climate has changed because of the unbalancing and untimely action of colonizers gone blind by greed, always wanting to plant more sugar cane and produce more sugar. This is why underdeveloped countries are concerned with environmental problems and pollution. They worry because the underdevelopment they find themselves in is a consequence of a kind of development which was conceived with no respect for Nature and in which Man is merely an instrument for production." JosuedeCastro.com
Josue de Castro was a man ahead of his time. He coined the term underdevelopment based on what he was seeing happen in mid 20th century Brazil with their sugarcane plantations. He told of first realizing that hunger was a man made malady, born of economics and greed. The mangrove was where he saw men drawn like flies to shit in order to survive in a food system that was raping the land and de-culturing the peoples while it grew sugarcane to sweeten a global palate. The mangrove story is a powerful cautionary tale and one that all Islanders should pay heed to. We already are known producers of industrial potatoes for french fries for the global marketplace, and at what cost? If you think that the Food Island Partnership is a wise investment for Island taxpayers, read this, and please, re-consider.
“In a mangrove everything is, was or will be crab, even men and mud. It was not at Sorbonne, or any other knowledgeable university, that I became aware of the phenomenon of hunger. It revealed itself before my eyes in the mangroves of Capibaribe, in the miserable neighborhoods of Recife - Afogados, Pina, Santo Amaro, Ilha do Leite. This was my university, my Sorbonne. The mud of the Recife mangroves, swarming with crabs and human beings made of crab meat, thinking and feeling like crabs.
These are amphibious creatures - living between land and water, half man, half beast. Fed in childhood with crab broth - this milk made of mud - they became foster brothers and sisters of crabs.
Soon I became aware of this curious mimicry: men resembling crabs. Crawling and flattening themselves like crabs in order to survive.
I had the impression that inhabitants of the mangrove - men and crabs born on the river banks - just sunk deeper in the mud as they grew.
This reality struck me from inside. That's how I discovered hunger.
At first I thought this was restricted to the area where I lived - the mangrove region. Then I realized that the mangroves were like a promised land in the starving scene of northeastern Brazil. They attracted men from other areas where hunger was even worse - regions of draught and sugarcane monoculture; where the sugar industry crushed men and sugarcane alike, turning everything into bagasse.
To see them act, talk, fight, live and die, was like seeing the tyrannical iron hands of hunger modeling the heroes of the greatest drama in earth - the drama of hunger.
Through the stories told by men and by following the river's course I came to know that hunger was not exclusive to mangroves. The mangroves just attracted hungry men from all over the northeast: those who came from the draught areas and those belonging to the sugar-producing zones alike. They all came to the promised land, to nestle in the mud nests built by both and witness the beautiful crab life-cycle. When I grew up and began travelling around the world I saw different landscapes and noticed that what I believed to be a unique phenomenon was actually an universal reality. That the human landscape in the mangroves repeated itself all over the world. Those characters from the mud in Recife were identical to others in countless areas plagued by hunger. That the human mud from Recife, as I had seen in my childhood, continues to tarnish our planet until today, like great black blotches of misery: the dark demographic spots of the geography of hunger. JosuedeCastro.com
The Food Island Partnership asks how will they measure their success?
How will success be measured? Success will be tied to the value of the food economy on Prince Edward Island: Employment and engagement in the sector, export sales of food products, economic impact of the sector and profitability and diversity of participating companies and individuals.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
I encourage Islanders to consider what they truly want to see happen with food production on this Island. What could be our true measures of success on this Island?
What of an ideal that raises everyone up? What if our working efforts were aimed at taking better care of ourselves, our neighbours, and our Island environment out of a sense of caring? What if we grew the food we needed to become food secure and any extra food generated from a local grass roots economy is shared elsewhere? What of a culture of sharing, and an economy of sufficiency? What of minimal, sustainable and holistic resource development instead a culture of more, bigger and better? What of a propagating a culture which by its very nature facilitated a more peaceful, successful existence encouraging everyone to fulfill a moral obligation towards creating a more habitable society in which hunger is a forgotten word and the natural world is respected.
How many Islanders crawling on their bellies will it take before the governing elite recognize that we are not growing or sharing food equitably and sustainably?
Jill MacCormack
* As an addendum, I will happily admit there has been some good progress made in discussions surrounding improving food security on PEI, thanks in large part to the wonderful work of the PEI Food Security Network https://peifoodsecurity.wordpress.com/. There has also been some improved creation and promotion of local food/ products in the three years since this essay was written (gladly think organic PEI oats https://heatherdale-wholesome-goods.myshopify.com/products/organic-fresh-cold-milled-oats ) yet the underlying thought process which brought the strategic plan into being in the first place still urge a push towards production for a global market place as the best route for Islanders. I still respectfully disagree.
* Summer 2018 PEI Organic Buyers Guide
* And kudos as well to the Certified Organic Organic Producers Co-op http://organicpei.com/ for their continued excellent work.
The Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan, stacked high with a poster worthy roster of industry leaders, has not taken a visionary view of how we grow and share food on PEI. Thanks to this fundamental lack of true vision, all Islanders should be deeply concerned. After all, it is our air, soil, waters and communities which could be further degraded in the pursuit of global markets for farm and fish products with our tax payer dollars funding the venture.
Although it contains all the important gloss and business lingo to seem progressive, the Strategic Plan has failed to be progressive in the critical arenas of true environmental stewardship and community building. The creators of the plan have grossly failed to acknowledge the current environmental and social realities which agri-business has wreaked upon our land and waters here. This is evidenced in their repeated presentation of PEI as a land of "pristine" environmental conditions perfect for basing an economy of food upon.
Throughout its history, PEI has been recognized for its distinctive food and agricultural advantages. Celebrated as a “million acre farm” for its red fertile soil, temperate climate, clean water, and pristine environment, its generations of farmers, fishers and food processors have secured a foundation in food production and manufacturing that has fundamentally shaped the provincial economy. This activity has transformed the Island landscape into a pastoral setting recognized by tourists all over the world.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
Concerning as well is the language utilized in the section on areas of concern regarding environmental restrictions and how they limit development:
Environmental concerns related to the food industry also have an impact. Environmental regulations in a province with the highest population density in Canada adds to the cost of production. For small companies, compliance requires time and considerable resources.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
Failure to acknowledge large scale agriculture's role in fish kills and soil degradation is not a forward thinking approach to industry renewal. Inherent in any re-configuring should be a long term plan for soil renewal, watershed improvement and a phasing out of all growing, producing and packaging practices which degrade the very resources which the Food Island plan hopes to promote and develop.
Prince Edward Island has enjoyed widespread recognition for its unique scenic landscapes, pristine waters and clean environment, promoted through years of tourism marketing.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
And just because the PEI Tourism Industry chooses to ignore the reality of the environmental crisis we are experiencing with our air, soil and waters here in order to promote the notion of unspoiled, purity of place that tourists desire, does not mean that this is the actual state of our environment.
Their strategic plan is designed to rely exclusively on competition within the global marketplace while acknowledging that globalization has limited the marketing and sales opportunities for small scale producers and packagers who do not or cannot play the game the way the global market and big business dictates.
Globalization is an asset and intricate factor. It creates vital opportunities to meet the evolving food demands of the world’s emerging economies and high-growth areas, including Asia, as incomes and protein consumption rise. Successful global supply chains are being forged with partners beyond national boundaries, enhancing value but also limiting options for smaller growers and food processors who fall outside the group.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
While paying lip service to climate change and the mass exodus of young Islanders elsewhere to find work as realities that need to be considered, the plan fails to fully recognize the driving force that globalization is in creating both of those concerns. Further, it demonstrates no real understanding of the complexities involved. It also does not consider the role large scale production of food has played in the disappearance of small family farms and the decline of rural communities.
A truly forward thinking society would know intuitively that creating an ideal based on competition is one which is bound to create a similar world as that in which we are currently living; a world entrenched in the inequitable sharing of resources and resource development driven by greed rather than by need.
"...too often, Island stakeholders see each other as competitors rather than partners, but partnership is what is needed to rise to the challenge of global trade.What is needed is a model of “co-opetition” or compet-
itive collaboration"
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
Competitive collaboration is still rooted in competition and co-opetition is a strategy which relies heavily on the fundamental relationship of trust between players. Has the relationship between Island farmers and agri-business ever truly favoured the farmer? Not sure that large scale agri-business has ever proven itself trustworthy enough to make me want to shake on any deals. And who are the Island stakeholders referred to in the above quote? Are they even Islanders?
Is there room for sustainability, equality and sharing of resources in the industry proposed, government supported Food Island Partnership, or is it one which is dominated by a "cream of the crop" mentality?
“I love the story of the Island. You can’t find a more pristine environment to grow a potato or raise a steer. The Island is an isolated wonder of nature.”
-Chef Mark McEwan, Head Judge “Top Chef Canada,” The
Food Network, Toronto restaurateur and cookbook author.
I certainly do not see Islanders benefiting from taking a singular approach to product or resource development such as creating a best-of PEI services or product line. Just as seed potatoes and fox farming are not standards of excellence which Islanders should aspire to return to, neither should we aspire to create an Island economy that sees the best of what we grow and produce being shipped to foreign markets. As a small Island very dependent on imports we are the perfect place to create an economy of scale that sees us growing our food and teaching each other the most healthful and economic utilization of the food resources we produce. We could both employ and teach and feed each other in the process. Growing and preparing healthful foods could become part of our curriculum from grade school upwards. Already small scale producers here are reaping the benefit of the eat local movement. So are Island consumers. The Food Island Partnership doesn't see it this way. They think all Islanders should be brand ambassadors for an export product line that they both work to produce, and promote.
Other provinces have “buy local” programs. While successful in provinces with a large consumer base, the impact in a province with an internal marketplace of 145,000 people will be limited. What will have enormous impact occurs when 145,000 Islanders decide to become ambassadors for PEI food products. In the age of social media and the importance of credibility in marketing, it is crucial that a population demonstrate pride in, and knowledge of, its own products, in order to successfully export them.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
Instead of being progressive, this would set the stage for us to further become a banana republic by laying the groundwork for the development of underdevelopment of both our economy and culture, too much of which has already occurred and/or is still occurring.
"Underdevelopment is not lack of or insufficient development, as many people tend to think. It is a product or subproduct of development. Underdevelopment derives inevitably from the colonial or neo-colonial forms of economical exploitation which still imposes itself in many regions of our planet." JosuedeCastro.com
We are living on a food insecure Island in a very hungry world. We simply cannot afford to create a "best of" Island products for export as the Food Island Strategic Plan would like to see happen.
"Still more deadly then severe and complete hunger is the phenomenon of chronic or partial hunger, because of its social and economical effects which silently undermine countless populations around the world." JosuedeCastro.com
Unless, of course, built into the Food Island schema, were policies to ensure better soil and water management and to see to it that a decent percentage of the food produced remain on the Island in order to feed hungry Islanders. But the overall tone of the document does not promote this.
One step in a new direction might be the implementation of a food surcharge as proposed by Island farmer Margie Loo.
The small surcharge could be levied on foods purchased which were not grown organically so as to to create a fund which could help encourage better soil management and reward those farmers on a sliding scale who are doing the expensive work of trying to improve soil quality while growing their crops. http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/News/Local/2015-03-07/article-4068555/Island-farmer-says-P.E.I.-needs-farm-surcharge-system/1
A change of consciousness is urgently needed. One that will bring about a new, more equitable reality--not a simple re-packaging of a way of being as the Food Island Partnership plan proposes. This way of farming has already contributed to the decrease in our ability to feed ourselves-- and to rural as well as environmental decline-- why continue supporting such a system?
Setting our sights or standards higher is another starting point, but not if it is simply to make us more desirable players on the global market. The global market is the problem--not the solution. It encourages a capitalist mindset and one which further ingrains the belief that natural resources exist to be developed and that nature is something over which humans should have domination. The global market place is why we have hunger in the world, is why our soils are depleted to the point of being almost barren on our Island, is why our well water is increasingly becoming less drinkable and is why there is decline in rural communities.
The set of beliefs which underlies our current economic system and upon which the proposed Food Island Partnership relies is the notion that once we create the best products, the bigger markets will want to do business with us and we will have a more secure economy. I don't see this as a food secure, job secure, or environmentally friendly way of doing business. This story line has been played out on the Island stage for far too many years and has served only to denude our land and rob our peoples of a way of life which once promoted a sense of community and caring. de Castro saw this same story being played out years ago in Brazil.
"One of the best regions to observe as test ground for our theories is the sugar-producing northeast of Brazil, with its typical natural environment. The life of its soil, water, plants and even its climate has changed because of the unbalancing and untimely action of colonizers gone blind by greed, always wanting to plant more sugar cane and produce more sugar. This is why underdeveloped countries are concerned with environmental problems and pollution. They worry because the underdevelopment they find themselves in is a consequence of a kind of development which was conceived with no respect for Nature and in which Man is merely an instrument for production." JosuedeCastro.com
Josue de Castro was a man ahead of his time. He coined the term underdevelopment based on what he was seeing happen in mid 20th century Brazil with their sugarcane plantations. He told of first realizing that hunger was a man made malady, born of economics and greed. The mangrove was where he saw men drawn like flies to shit in order to survive in a food system that was raping the land and de-culturing the peoples while it grew sugarcane to sweeten a global palate. The mangrove story is a powerful cautionary tale and one that all Islanders should pay heed to. We already are known producers of industrial potatoes for french fries for the global marketplace, and at what cost? If you think that the Food Island Partnership is a wise investment for Island taxpayers, read this, and please, re-consider.
“In a mangrove everything is, was or will be crab, even men and mud. It was not at Sorbonne, or any other knowledgeable university, that I became aware of the phenomenon of hunger. It revealed itself before my eyes in the mangroves of Capibaribe, in the miserable neighborhoods of Recife - Afogados, Pina, Santo Amaro, Ilha do Leite. This was my university, my Sorbonne. The mud of the Recife mangroves, swarming with crabs and human beings made of crab meat, thinking and feeling like crabs.
These are amphibious creatures - living between land and water, half man, half beast. Fed in childhood with crab broth - this milk made of mud - they became foster brothers and sisters of crabs.
Soon I became aware of this curious mimicry: men resembling crabs. Crawling and flattening themselves like crabs in order to survive.
I had the impression that inhabitants of the mangrove - men and crabs born on the river banks - just sunk deeper in the mud as they grew.
This reality struck me from inside. That's how I discovered hunger.
At first I thought this was restricted to the area where I lived - the mangrove region. Then I realized that the mangroves were like a promised land in the starving scene of northeastern Brazil. They attracted men from other areas where hunger was even worse - regions of draught and sugarcane monoculture; where the sugar industry crushed men and sugarcane alike, turning everything into bagasse.
To see them act, talk, fight, live and die, was like seeing the tyrannical iron hands of hunger modeling the heroes of the greatest drama in earth - the drama of hunger.
Through the stories told by men and by following the river's course I came to know that hunger was not exclusive to mangroves. The mangroves just attracted hungry men from all over the northeast: those who came from the draught areas and those belonging to the sugar-producing zones alike. They all came to the promised land, to nestle in the mud nests built by both and witness the beautiful crab life-cycle. When I grew up and began travelling around the world I saw different landscapes and noticed that what I believed to be a unique phenomenon was actually an universal reality. That the human landscape in the mangroves repeated itself all over the world. Those characters from the mud in Recife were identical to others in countless areas plagued by hunger. That the human mud from Recife, as I had seen in my childhood, continues to tarnish our planet until today, like great black blotches of misery: the dark demographic spots of the geography of hunger. JosuedeCastro.com
The Food Island Partnership asks how will they measure their success?
How will success be measured? Success will be tied to the value of the food economy on Prince Edward Island: Employment and engagement in the sector, export sales of food products, economic impact of the sector and profitability and diversity of participating companies and individuals.
Food Island Partnership Strategic Plan
I encourage Islanders to consider what they truly want to see happen with food production on this Island. What could be our true measures of success on this Island?
What of an ideal that raises everyone up? What if our working efforts were aimed at taking better care of ourselves, our neighbours, and our Island environment out of a sense of caring? What if we grew the food we needed to become food secure and any extra food generated from a local grass roots economy is shared elsewhere? What of a culture of sharing, and an economy of sufficiency? What of minimal, sustainable and holistic resource development instead a culture of more, bigger and better? What of a propagating a culture which by its very nature facilitated a more peaceful, successful existence encouraging everyone to fulfill a moral obligation towards creating a more habitable society in which hunger is a forgotten word and the natural world is respected.
How many Islanders crawling on their bellies will it take before the governing elite recognize that we are not growing or sharing food equitably and sustainably?
Jill MacCormack
* As an addendum, I will happily admit there has been some good progress made in discussions surrounding improving food security on PEI, thanks in large part to the wonderful work of the PEI Food Security Network https://peifoodsecurity.wordpress.com/. There has also been some improved creation and promotion of local food/ products in the three years since this essay was written (gladly think organic PEI oats https://heatherdale-wholesome-goods.myshopify.com/products/organic-fresh-cold-milled-oats ) yet the underlying thought process which brought the strategic plan into being in the first place still urge a push towards production for a global market place as the best route for Islanders. I still respectfully disagree.
* Summer 2018 PEI Organic Buyers Guide
* And kudos as well to the Certified Organic Organic Producers Co-op http://organicpei.com/ for their continued excellent work.
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