Whats the body got to do with it?

Everything, really. Our bodies are our own private flesh-ships.  Our own watery works of art and in a perfect world, they would be our number one reason for living. We’d live to take care and nurture and revive them, never sacrificing them for someone elses benefit or greed. And yet, alas, we are here right now and we will try and do what we can with what we were thrown into. I will digress to go back to my intital point, which is, the body is the center of our human experience. Whether we love our bodies or want to add or subtract parts of it, its all yours for the taking, loving, abusing, and amusing.

Last quarter I took a class called Afro-Brazilian Dance with Janelle Campoverde which changed the way I relate to my body , how my body relates to itself, and the way I see dance as a tool for society.

Every morning when class would begin we would spent the first 45 minutes doing  what we casually called “body awareness” practices. We would dim the lights and Janelle would guide us through seemingly simple movements that were often times quite complex due to the amount of muscles or bones that were being used and activated. All of the movements had some sort of benefit to the way our body naturally moves. After doing an exercise on one side, Janelle would invite us to walk around the room, or move our arms back and forth, and experience the difference in the range of motion that was now, suddenly accessible and moving so smoothly. Many of our body awareness exercises revolved around the hips, the back, and the shoulders, as those were the body parts that were moved the most in Afro-Brazilian Dance.

After doing these practices for a few weeks, I began to imagine all of the ways it could be beneficial and the two that came up right away were:

  1. Farm workers-who bend or kneel for eight to ten hours a day
  2. Women who are holding trauma inside of their body from assaults
  3. Individuals who are trying to escape their body to escape their pain

In my project this quarter, I want to explore the ways the body connects to itself, the way the body connects to others, and the way the body connects to the earth. And how all of these connections can aide in the healing process of our bodies, our minds, and our planet.

Dance has been and is a powerful tool in uniting people and empowering all bodies. Similar to the U.S., Brazil was going through social and political heart ache surrounding race and unjust rulers in the 1960’s. In the late 1960’s, music, art, and politics merged into the art movement that is known as Tropiclasses-samba-sonia-jamcalia. Artists used rhythm and performance art to critique the oppression of the Brazilian dictatorship at the time. This art project spilled over into everyday life, people of all ages were dancing in the streets to communicate, to unite, and to show the government that they weren’t sitting this one out.

This art form opened the doors for other movements, and soon after Tropicalia the Black Consciousness Movement made it way to Brazil in the 1970’s, an organization dedicated to promoting and celebrating Afro-Brazilian culture in Brazil.

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Image Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jongo

http://www.capoeiradc.com/class/samba-afro-brazil-dance

https://www.pinterest.com/drielyalves1/dan%C3%A7a-afro/

 

 

We were all little eggs once

For our classes very first tasting lab with Annie we ate

A standard boiled egg

Boiled egg with salt

Marbled Eggs

Eggs boiled with radishes

And Salmon Roe

Annie had us taste each egg first, taking note of its appearance, the taste, and any other sensations that may have risen.

We did two rounds of this eating and reflecting and  there was one major difference.

The first time we simply ate the food.

The second time Annie shared stories with us, one for each egg. Some stories were about what city the eggs were laid in, some were about how they were prepared, and some stories were about the conditions of the chickens or how the salmon eggs are “harvested” from the female salmon.

Fig-6-salmon-female-mature-JW-_small

Its interesting to me, even now as I type this emotions are rising about the salmon. Even weeks after this tasting (this tasting was week one, and now we are in week eight) I am still finding knots being formed in my throat as a few tears make their way down my cheeks.

To say the least, eating after hearing the stories was a very different experience for me. I felt joy when I ate the traditional boiled egg, remembering the story that was shared about how women would carry on their moms recipe and how this tradition has been in the family for generations. I remember feeling ancient when enjoying the marbled eggs, imaging what it must have been like to celebrate the new year while eating these delicious and savory eggs that were boiled in black tea-they were definitely my favorite.

Image Source:

Chinese Tea Eggs, revamped!

Dairy Kefir: A Brief Introduction

Kefir translates to “the feel good beverage.” The word Kefir (kay-fear) is derived from the Turkish word kief which means “pleasure.”

No one knows where or when the kefir grain first appeared. What we do know is that dairy kefir grains originated from the Northern Caucasus Mountains region of the former USSR

This ancient fermented dairy beverage tastes similar to yogurt but has a lot more to offer and the texture is closer to a smoothie.

When you make your own dairy kefir at home, this is how it all begins

ComAlt Week 6 024

These are the kefir “grains.” They are stretchy, sticky, and gooey clumps of living cultures of yeast and lactic acid bacteria. The microorganisms in the grains multiply and ferment the sugars in the milk, turning it into the drink we know and love, kefir. I use raw goats milk. Any animal milk works, milk alternatives can work but the results will not be the same and it will not be as nutritious.

The cultures feast on the milk for 24-48 hours. The length of fermentation depends on the temperature of their home and how sour you want it to taste. The longer they ferment, the more sour it will taste. The cultures like to be in warmer temperatures, from sixty-eight to eighty degrees. If it is cooler than 68, they may need to ferment for longer.

Top Seven Health Benefits:

  1. Fantastic source of many nutrients including protein, calcium, phosphorous, vitamin B12, riboflavin, magnesium, and vitamin D.
  2. It is a powerful probiotic (the bacteria we deem beneficial) that can help with weight management, sugar addictions, mental health, and digestion.
  3. Kefir has been used around the world in relieving candida over growth, chronc fatigue syndrome, A.D.H.D., crhon’s, emphysema, and restoring the inner eco-system after antibiotic therapy
  4. Homemade Kefir can contain up to 60 different strains of probiotics and yeast-yogurt has about five
  5. Restores balance in the gut by colonizing unoccupied bacteria space in your gut, keeping the harmful bacteria moving along
  6. Kefir can improve bone health and lower the risk of osteoporosis–it increase calcium absorption.
  7. It is generally well tolerated by all people, even lactose intolerant. The lactic acid bacteria in fermented dairy foods turn the lactose into lactic acid.

Farm-to-Body and Natural Nourishment

When I say natural nourishment here, I mean it in the most literal way possible: nurturing through the natural world.

Natural World: all of the animals, plants, and all things that are existing in nature and are not made or caused by humans.

Last year I had the opportunity to go to the Eco-Farm conference in Monterrey, California with the Evergreen State College program Ecological Agriculture: Healthy Soil, Healthy People.

Dr. Daphne Miller61HuuNj49AL._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_ was the keynote speaker the second night of the conference. Her book Faramcology has initiated a conversation about how the health of the soil can gift our bodies with health and well-being.  Miller takes us a few steps beyond “food is medicine” and offers the idea that the farm where the food is grown is what can offer us the real medicine, not just the food. And not only does this nutritious food from this nutritious soil heal us, but being on the farm heals us as well.  Miller covers the many aspects of farming and how these aspacets have a direct and powerful impact on our health. From seed choice, soil management, to actually doing the physical labor yourself…they all have the ability to heal us or not. Dr. Miller brings up this idea that farm-to-body is an important relationship and deserves our attention. When we heal the soil, we heal ourselves.

I recently came across a video on Upworthy where a man shared his abusive and isolating experiences in the foster care system as a child and teenager, which eventually led him to becoming a foster parent, and eventually permanent parent to four children with his partner. Their new youngest son was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, and when it was time for him to attend school, the school was calling his dad every day to come and calm him down. Doctors told the couple that being around animals and nature would help their childs frontal lobe develpop, and so the couple decided to buy a farm for their family of six. They lived with pigs, goats, and chickens. The chickens were the animals that the youngest son grew closest too. He was known to always have a chicken in his arms.

Here is the link to the video below:

https://www.facebook.com/Upworthy/videos/1643680139006171/

 

Both of these sources really got me thinking about our physical and mental relations to our environment and all of the living creatures that live with us. What does a truly symbiotic relationship between humans and the soil look like? Which microorganisims in the soil do good things when they are inside out bodies? Is eating dirt a good idea? I’ll get back to you about it.

The Ecosystems That We Are

Scientists and doctors have been investing more time and money into researching digestion. The last decade and a half have been exciting times for digestive health in the english-speaking medical world. PrintEight percent of the American population have diagnosed digestive diseases, six percent have acute episodes of digestive disease, and forty-three percent have intermittent digestive disorders.

Up until fairly recently we were not aware of the guts immense influence on the mind and our immune system.

We are still learning a lot about bacteria in general, and scientists are classifying bacteria as plants. This is why the term gut flora is going around, which isn’t completely accurate yet it quite descriptive. Similar to plants, different bacteria have different characteristics concerning their nutrition, habitat, and level of toxicity.

The scientifically correct terms for the ecosystems of our gut would be microbiota, or “little life,” and microbiome.

Quick facts about the life inside our gut:

  1. Our guts microbiome can weigh up to 4.5 pounds and contains about 100 trillion bacteria.
  2. 1 gram of feces contains more bacteria(or remnants of the bacteria life) than there are people on earth.
  3. When something is wrong with the microbiome of our gut, other systems will be negatively impacted. Skewed proportions of certain gut bacterias have been detected in people who experience obesity, malnutrition, nervous diseases, depression, and chronic digestive problems.
  4. Bacteria cracks open indigestible food for us, supplies the gut with energy, manufactures vitamins, breaks down toxins and medications, and trains our immune system to attack violators.
  5. 99% of all the microorganisms that live on us or in us are found in the gut.
  6. Our gastrointestinal tract is home to more than 1,000 different bacteria, populations of viruses, yeast, fungi, and other single celled organisms.
  7. Most of the bacteria lives in the large intestine and rectum

 

If the human body was the planet, our gut would be the forest were all the wildest creatures dwell

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images:

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-topics/Anatomy/your-digestive-system/Pages/anatomy.aspx

info:

http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/6328/1/Digestive-Diseases-The-Facts.html

 

 

Tea Speed Dating~Week four

On January 31, 2017 our dear classmate Kotomi guided our class through our first tea-tasting! As a part of Kotomis field study, she will be sharing with us the flavors and knowledge she finds while researching the history and chemistry of the popular beverage. During this tea tasting, we got to experience three different forms Camellia Sinensis during this first round.

The three teas we dated:

Matcha

ThAbout-Matcha-Imagee color of matcha tea was very striking to me. When it came to appearance, the periodt-mossy green had me the most intrigued out of all three. It was even more noticeable sitting next the dark colors of he pu-erh and oolong. How did it the green color come to be? When it was dry it had a sweet, fresh grass smell. When it was steeped it smelled more earthy, mossy, and astringent.

 

Pu-erh

Pu-erh-Shu-Classic

I have tried pu-erh in tea bags before, but I had never seen it outside of a bag. Which made me reflect on how far away Americans have strayed from the traditional practices and mediums of tea. Pu-erh had an earthy, full, and almost dull flavor the first round. It kind of smelled like animal when it was stepped, and a smell was not very noticeable at all to my senses when the leaves were still dry.

Oolong

A-scoop-of-Fushoushan-High-Mountain-Oolong-Tea

When I smelled the steeped oolong tea I exclaimed outloud, “I want to bathe in this!” The smell…is sweet and and floral. It is not overwhelming and yet it stands its ground.

It is also a protector of the human body. High mountain oolong, as well as green tea, has an amino acid called theanine which helps you feel elevated, calm, and clear. Which I imagine can help with cortizol levels in the body and the metabolism.

Images:

http://publications.nscds.org/science/2016/01/29/the-lady-drinking-tea/

 

Eat borage for some courage

Borago Officinalesfloral-edible-herbsMember of the Borageinaccae family

Known as the herb of gladness and burrage

Commonly referred to as Borage or Starflower, this herb has a well established reputation. In almost all historical writings surrounding borage, its power to uplift spirits and dispel gloom never go unnoticed. There is an ancient Latin verse that translates as “I, Borage, bring always gladness” and 17th century English botanist and herbalist John Garard believed ‘the leaves and flowers of borage put in wine make men and women glad and merry and drive away all sadness, dullness, and melancholy.’ Modern herbablists praise borages influence on hormonal activity. Cortisol, the stress hormone, and aldesterone are both supported by the essential fatty acids in the herb.  Borage restores vitality in the body and bones and calms the mind. Romans would feed borage to gladiators before their games and crusaders drank borage tea before battles.

In Italy borage is served as a side dish. In the U.S., it is typically found as an herbal supplement in powdered or tincture form. The leaves and bright blue-purple star shaped flowers have a taste similar to cucumbers, making a pleasant addition to salads, soups, cheeses, and beverages and when these plant parts are dried, they make a nutritive tea.

Health benefits of the Borage plant:

  • Essential fatty acids such as Gamma linolenic acid (GLA). Essential fatty acid dBotanical-Borage-Wayside-Woodland-1895-520eficiencies can affect mood, internal inflammation, and various cellular functionsHigh levels of calcium and iron
  • Potassium
  • Zinc
  • A, B, and C vitamins
  • Restores adrenal glands to their natural balance, creating a calmer mind and body
  • Natural sedative
  • Anti-inflammatory properties for skin and internal complications (current research is being done on Borage and arthritis)

Dosage

Borage can be taken fresh, in capsule form, or as a liquid extract.
A typical dose of the capsule picture-this-gardening-gone-wild-photo-contest-entryform is one to two grams per day. More than that can be tiring to the liver. Dried borage leaves and petals can be brewed into a tea. Three or four flowers mixed with leaves will be enough for 8 ounces of hot water.

Borage grows well in Pacific NorthWest summers and has the potential to be a cost-effective mood enhancer. The bees like them, too.

Images:

http://www.gourmetfoodreview.com/recipegourmet/cooking-herbs/

harvesttotable.com

http://www.macrolensmastery.com/tag/borage/

Seminar Week 4

Jennifer Diaz
SOS: ComAlt, Seminar pre-write Week 4
30 Jan 2017
Word Count:213
 
Passages:
“Growth in urbanization spurred the separation of producers and consumers…European growth relied on American plants. …England became the primary market for Califronia wheat, and by 1870, Califronia had become so dependent on the English market that it used a British measurement.”  (Newman 2013: 29, 54)
“-[and] finally to the political life of the mouth- a dense and eroticized point for the transfer of power. …  Of such importance is the article of bread, that the government of every country ought to hold a controlling hand of those circumstances, within its reach, which may have a tendency to augment the price of this commodity. …The excellence of bread, for many of these writers, lay in the fact that it was an unstimulating food, one that would not tax the body’s digestive energies or lend itself to aggravating the nerves. ” (Tompkins 2012: 58, 62)
 
News Media Context:
 
Wes Jackson: A Perennial Revolution in Agriculture
Just over the horizon, Wes Jackson envisions new ways to grow staples to feed us all. He doesn’t imagine thousands of acres of wheat, or mile-wide expanses of hybrid corn. Jackson sees a domestic analog of the prairie where families harvest perennial
sorghum or sunflowers. 
Tompkins gives us an excerpt from Colombian Magazine during the eighteenth century where an author proclaims that the government of every country ought to have control over their “important foods” so that they can control their value, if and when that control is needed. Farmer Wes Jackson acknowledges the importance of having a hand on our food system while keeping a pulse on the soil. Jackson dedicated most of his thirty-five years of work to “solving the problem of agriculture” by creating new ways to produce grain, drawing inspiration from natural energy flows, systems that did not require annual disruption of the soil. He describes this agriculture as being far more closely attuned to nature.
We have lost a decent amount of farm land to pavement and soil erosion since the 1970’s, so what will we do when there is not enough space to grow produce for the consumers?
Tompkins described the mouth as being a dense and eroticized point for the transfer of power.
The California and England market dependency caught my attention because the producer (the US) was so flexible and changed their trading language to accommodate their consumer. Who had the power in this situation, the source of the food or the source of the resources that keep the food source out-sourcing?

Seminar Week 3

Jennifer Diaz

24 January 2017

SOS: ComAlt Sem Pre-Write Wk 3

Word Count:240

Passages:

“Because it was so heavily traded, pepper eventually lost its “golden” status and fell to be considered among the most prosaic of spices. To meet growing demands in Europe during the late sixteenth and very early seventeenth centuries, pepper became over cultivated and difficult to regulate…”Pepper-pot” stews were considered mundane affairs for the middle and lower classes and not to be eaten by courtiers… From a global culinary and trade perspective, black pepper consistently ranks among the leading spices used by virtually every culture. No wonder it has been valued as “gray gold” and the “king of spices.”  (Newman 2013: 20, 21, 23)

 

“…“stick” in Sarag Ahmed’s useful term-to those subjects who labored with or close to food. As the United States hyper embodied notions of class, race, and gender were expressed in terms of food-the central matter of the kitchen…[hearth-place literature collapsed boundaries between classes OF HUMANS and species, drawing on the imagery of food for its focus on transformation and metamorphosis.” (Tompkins 2012: 16, 20)

 

News Media Context:

Mexican corn imports to rise at least 20 pct in 2017

MEXICO CITY, Jan 17 (Reuters) – Mexico will import at least one-fifth more yellow corn next season as higher fuel costs and a weak peso hit domestic crops while the same factors will drive up tortilla prices

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-4129658/Mexican-corn-imports-rise-20-pct-2017.html

 

Discussion:

Initially, the history of peppercorn reminded me of corn. Corn was born in Oaxaca, Mexico. Centuries later, all of the Americas had corn, and eventually corn made its way to almost every continent. Easy to grow and so many ways to prepare it, it fed many people. Corn may be king but it is food for the slaves and the poor people. We wouldn’t be Screenshot - 10_24_2014 , 8_25_37 PMable to have taco Tuesday if the tortillas were not reasonably priced, right?  After NAFTA, a good portion of US corn is sold to Mexico. Corn is a staple food in Mexico and the United States can sell it to them for extremely low prices because of NAFTA.

Tompkins introduces us to the term “stick”- the people who labored with or close to the food. In modern United States, the decent amount of the sticks in our country are migrant farm workers from Mexico and Central America. I am not sure how many migrant farm workers make their way to our corn growing states, but I find it interesting that people from central America have always said that they’re ancestors were the corn. What keeps a group of people connected to food, what enables someone to be a stick? Aren’t we all sticks?

Seminar Week 2

 

Jennifer Diaz

SOS: ComAlt, Seminar Pre-Write Week 2

17 January 2017

Word Count: 247

Passages:

“Hart estimates that for every dollar spent on food, 15 to 20 cents represent the raw commodities used in that product. The rest represents advertising, transportation and fuel, labor, real estate, and other inputs….’The organic, local food, and community· garden movements bring back the idea that the main cost we would like to see in our food is the agricultural product underneath,” Hart explains, and the excitement in his voice is audible. “As we look at those food systems, we bring back the percentage that is related to the underlying commodity’.” (Newman 2013: 11, 14)

“But this sense of dietary immersion in ones own elements, of burning from within, of the self indistinguishable from the “strong solution” of its surroundings …” “There are the eaters, and then there are the eaten; similarly, there are the eaters, and then there are the hungry … black bodies and subjects in these encounters fight back, and bite back, both in the white imaginary and in domestic manuals and novels produced by black authors. Although excluded from the biopolitical, nation-building imperatives of a mostly white reform movement that nonetheless often aligned itself with abolition, black authors and citizens insisted on their relevance and centrality to national narratives of bodily belonging.” (Tompkins 2012: 7,8,9)

News Media Context:

‘Agrihood’ project focuses on farm-to-table in Detroit

AR-161209999Detroit officials announced a partnership that will help transform a long-vacant apartment building into a community center and cafe to anchor its growing agricultural campus. The project is being touted as the nation’s first urban “agrihood,” an alternative neighborhood that’s built around the farm-to-table model featured mainly in rural and suburban settings.

http://smartgrowth.org/agrihood-project-focuses-farm-table-detroit/

Discussion:

Newmans book gave us numbers concerning how much of our money actually goes towards the nourishment we seek. Why should people who cannot afford to own their own homes be forced to support this middle person who is in the way of us eating our corn flakes? Tompkins points out that in the images of black folks that white people depict, they usually always fight back and bite back. Despite their oppression they always “burn from within” (Tompkins 2012: 7) Later in the passage Tompkins goes on to say how in all of the films and books and even in day-to-day life, black people in the nineteenth century had a sharp tongue (as sharp as their master would allow.) I was thinking about how blackFirst-Sustainable-Urban-Agrihood-in-Detroit people are portrayed in our modern media this still seemed relevant. Most roles for black bodies in the entertainment world are the funny guy or the angry sassy girl. Then it got me thinking about how black people fight back without using direct verbal attacks. Like the way Black Panthers was formed or the abortion clinic of Chicago in the 1960’s. I learned about the Detroit “agrihood” recently; another way to fight back. It got me thinking about how else we fight back without literally fighting. Whose idea was this “agrihood” anyway? Was it someone who had melanin? Does that matter in the long run if people are being fed real food for prices that make sense? I am not sure.

 

Citations:

Newman, Kara. (2013). The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Supermarkets. New York: Columbia University Press.

Tompkins, Kyla Wazana. (2012). Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. NewYork: New York University Press.

Images:

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20161201/NEWS/161209999/michigan-urban-farming-initiative-grows-plan-for-agrihood-in-detroit