The evolution of baseball and heirloom tomatoes

I have been rolling this around in my head for awhile, and the moment has finally come to put it on the screen. Baseball is like tomatoes. Barry Bonds just broke a record and the sports analysts are having a field day arguing about whether or not it "counts." Well, of course it counts, he hit more home runs than Hank Aaron... that is a new record. It counts, but it just doesn't mean the same thing anymore. It is not comparing apples to oranges, but more like comparing heirloom tomatoes to grocery store tomatoes.

Heirloom tomatoes do no travel well. They weren't designed to travel. They were designed to be eaten still warm from the sun, just picked, and delicious alone or maybe a pinch of salt and pepper. Grocery store tomatoes were designed to be placed into trucks and driven halfway across the country or further and get to their destination without being squashed. It doesn't matter that they are pink, bland, and pithy. They are not about flavor, they are about distance.

And ever since the baseball strike, baseball has been more about distance (metaphorically) and less about flavor (more metaphor). It is not the same game that it used to be, and I propose that Unitarian Universalism does not much resemble Unitarianism or Universalism as they were originally developed. I am not saying that this is a bad thing. Grocery store tomatoes serve their purpose, after all. Our Unitarian Universalist tradition is a Living Tradition, growing and evolving, serving different needs for different people. Some people would rather go to Hy Vee and pick up some hothouse toms or hydroponically grown ones, and that is fine. Me? I'd rather pick them from my own vines and sit on my porch slurping them up after wiping the dirt off onto my jeans. It's a religious experience.

Speaking of hunger

I am really excited about this Fellowship Year and working with the social action folks to get the kids involved. Especially since Carol E-D is into food and hunger as issues that the children can understand.

I have had this dream since I was director of ICAN and delivered people their gov't commodities. If you have never seen commodities, they are a weird mishmash of things that have potential. Canned meat, beans, rice, canned fruit and fruit juice, a cheese not unlike velveeta. Sometimes cereal. Dry milk. I was always a little stumped at how the gov't thought people would use these. We are talking about people who qualify for commodities, so they have limited resources already. Oh, but wait, we ARE talking about he gov't so they don't have to think about practical things like how someone might soak the beans in a pot they don't have so that they can make a delicious healthy soup for cold winter nights. Do they have a stove to cook it on? Do they have electricity? Water? Do they know how to read the label on the dang bag of beans? Gov't - not detail oriented!

My dream since I saw this cardboard box of odd foodstuffs has been to organize classes that teach people what to do with the box of things that the gov't gave them. Every month, they come to the imaginary center, where their children are cared for in a loving environment while they cook, and they learn what to do with their monthly allotment. A crew of dedicated volunteers helps cut and chop the vegetable adjuncts for the class demo while others collect lists of materials that people need in their home in order to cook the food (sharp knife, cutting board, cookpot) and people share ideas of how to make do when you don't have the tool or ingredient that you would most like to have. The basic tools that they need are procured for them so that they can use the resources that the gov't made available to them, and the program makes sense!

I keep hearing Marilyn and Forrest talk about Just Food, a local program having something to do with ECKAN and Ann Weick. And I have seen lots of people at the Fellowship bring in bags and boxes of food on Sunday mornings that people need, for their stomachs as well as their souls.

(My real dream is that this Miracle Kitchen evolves into a restaurant where people are trained to have jobs in restaurants and meals are served to homeless, low-income, and paying customers alike. Sort of a Paradise Cafe with a social action spin.)

Yesterday was my big brother's birthday, and I took my kiddo over to Liberty for dinner with my bro. He is a chef, and he runs the kitchen at the HyVee on 6th Street. I was telling him about my Miracle Kitchen and he shook his head. He said, "ya know, sis, we throw away so much food, and when other people see it, they say things about coming back to get it and getting it to LINK or whoever will take it and share it with those in need, but they never come back to get it. I guess they are just too busy to remember."

I will try to not get so busy that I can't remember to come and help get to people the sustenance that they need.

Volunteer Corn

I just read a blog from a friend who has had a pretty rough year. Apartment fire, mother dying, got married (not rough, but a huge change), and her ex committed suicide. Wow! And she keeps on keeping on.
She wrote about her little garden that she has been tending to this summer. Her hubby was irritated that she didn't pull each and every weed as soon as she could. One really caught her eye and she admired how it clung for life to the fence, and grew straight and tall. Her little weed now has one beautiful ear of corn on it.
Cynical people might be saying to themselves right now "volunteer corn? that can't taste good. Probably some weird hybrid or feed corn or nothing that a person ought to eat!"

Cynical people miss out on so much in life. Maybe her point is not to get something out of that feeds her stomach, but somehow it has already fed her spirit. And I think she was deservedly hungry.