Trouble the Water the Movie

Wow, what a powerful movie. I watched this last night and I was so amazed, not just by the fact that it's a true story, with actual first person video of the entire storm (Hurricane Katrina), but what really struck me was that it was from the point of view of a poor couple from the 9th ward who were struggling to survive before the storm but had the foresight to document the event and to seek out documentarians to get their story out there, never victims, but always strong and caring.

If I taught high school in the city, I would show this to my students in a heartbeat because it really gives voice to the voiceless and shows their experience is a shared experience and a valid experience, wherever you come from, you can be in charge of your choices and your future, no matter what life throws at you. The woman filmmaker, Kimberly Rivers Roberts decides to record her neighborhood and the storm, keeping her caring, sunny disposition throughout, later revealing a powerful rap persona, Black Kold Medina and we learn she has had a life no one would envy but has not let this keep her down.

Food Inc. Movie Premier and Eats & Beats

I went to the Food Inc. movie premier tonight (free tickets were given out to see it at the Ritz Borse) and it was much of the things I know from work, corporate food vs. local growers, but some new stuff: the companies that control the chicken, beef and pork, corn and soybean seeds.

There were the usual experts: Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan author of Omnivore's Dillema, but the best character in the movie is Joel Salatin
owner/farmer of Polyface Farms in Virginia, who feeds his livestock grass, and has the most matter of fact way of describing how scewed the food system has gotten when he describes how his cows eat grass.

I've been trying to wean myself off of plastics and this movie made me think more about cutting out traditional food products, esp. industrial meat. I've been shopping almost exclusively at Whole Foods, but I really don't know where the turkey I bought came from, or if the salmon is fed corn. And it makes me strongly consider buying the meat products at Farm Fresh Express or farmers markets. I knew about the industrial mechanization of the meat corporations, but I didn't think about the chemicals and poo and ecoli and where it comes from (even on spinach).

This is all connected with my work for the Urban Nutrition Initiative and I'm excited to go the the Eats & Beats dinner on Saturday night, 5:30-8:30 at 48th and Baltimore Ave. The high school farmers and chefs are doing the most of the cooking, but they also have donations from many local restaurants and farms. I took photographs of the garden they tend at University City Hish School, my garden at Spring Gardens Community Garden and at Reading Terminal Market at Iovine Brothers and Fair Food Farmstand and they will be on the silent auction tables, matted and in sets of cards.