Fighting Fair with the Fowl and the Food System

The semester is winding down, I've been battling some kind of weird stomach bug & headache for the past couple of days (and, no, I haven't been eating any bagged spinach). I don't feel well enough to go out to Dianna's party, but I don't feel sick enough to sit in front of the TV, so the blog is my happy medium.

Heather Shearer raised a good point in response to my blog posting about the e-coli scares. She pointed out that a lot of the problem stems back to grain-fed cattle issue. Here's what she said:

"Of course, a large part of this problem is the situation created by grain-fed cattle. Research suggests that the deadly strain of e-coli causing these problems was virtually unheard of in grass-fed cattle. Indeed, cows and crops used to mutually benefit each other (manure for fertilizer). That's no longer the case since the rise of factory farming.

In any event, it's enough to worry the vegetarians among us. We don't want to participate in certain practices -- and we don't -- but we have to worry about the health problems caused by meat-producers and meat-eaters anyway. I suppose it gives us even more reason to try to actively change the food-consumption landscape."

Good comment. Part of it, too, is that grain is subsidized and there is over-production-- a result of "get bigger or get out "farm policies since the seventies (and possibly earlier). So what to do with that cheap subsidized grain that you and I pay for--feed it to the cattle, fatten 'em up faster, and get them to market faster. Make a profit faster, too! Cattle are not set up to digest that grain, either, so we're going against the evolution of the cow.

Then take the subsidized corn crop and put it into high fructose corn syrup and make everyone fatter! How could we operate such screwed-up logic? It's called industrialized agriculture, and, yes, it puts food on the table and the shelves, but at what cost to our health, to the environment, to animals?

I agree with Heather that we have to change the food landscape, and one of the first vehicles for change is not only reform of the system, but "food literacy"--addressing how the food industrial complex actually works with the consumers who are dependent on it. Heather's research on the USDA food pyramid is a critical piece of this! i also think that with the past-peak oil situation that we have no choice but to reform oil-intensive agriculture.

So it will all come back to grass and the land soon enough. Start gardening!

Also, back to the question of broiler houses.
Some in Kentucky have fought back against broiler houses--and won. See this news release. Wilma, if you're out there, I suggest you contact Aloma Dew and the others who pressed this suit and ask them for advice.

Also, factoryfarm.org has a set of guidelines about how to confront a CAFO. I think there are good ideas here.
http://www.factoryfarm.org/guide/


United Poultry Concerns February 2, 2005
Tyson Chicken Held Accountable for Pollution

NEWS RELEASE

January 26, 2005

Contact: Aloma Dew 270-685-2034

Phillip Shepherd 502-227-1122

John Harbison 802-879-3940



Tyson Chicken Held Accountable for Pollution

Final settlement gives relief to neighbors: Tyson must reduce emissions

Owensboro, KY. In a “David vs. Goliath” battle, neighbors of huge industrial chicken operations, working with the Sierra Club, have finally won relief from the toxic pollution caused by Tyson Chicken. In a settlement signed today, Tyson has agreed to spend a half a million dollars to study and report on emissions and mitigate ammonia emissions that have been plaguing rural residents for years.

“Ever since Tyson moved in next door, my family has suffered from the stench, dust, and toxic pollution from their operations. Finally justice has been served, and Tyson is going to be on the hook for the problems they have caused,” said Leesa Webster, a plaintiff in the case. “’Home Sweet Home’ takes on a different meaning now—with Tyson being held accountable for their emissions, I can finally breathe easier,” added Bernardine Edwards, another plaintiff in McLean County who lives next to 16 chicken houses.

This settlement comes on the heels of a landmark court decision last November, when a federal judge in Owensboro ruled that Tyson is responsible for reporting toxic ammonia emissions from their operations. Since Tyson controls how the chickens are raised, what medications and food they are given, and Tyson received the bulk of the profit, the court ruled that they should no longer be off the hook for the consequences of their pollution—and editorials throughout the state praised this as a “common-sense” decision. This concept, called integrator liability, prevents Tyson from shifting the blame for their pollution to the local growers—and the ruling is expected to have far-reaching effects in rural areas around the country.

Today the final settlement consent decree was filed in Federal District Court in Owensboro. In addition to integrator liability, established in the 2003 ruling, Tyson must conduct ammonia testing at sites and report their findings. Tyson has also agreed to plant $50,000 worth of trees to act as a screen that will protect neighbors from the pollution coming from chicken houses. In addition, they will pay all legal fees connected with the case.

According to Sierra Club attorney Barclay Rogers, “This landmark decision will affect the entire industry. It’s clear that polluting factory farms have the responsibility to clean up their act and stop putting communities at risk.”

“After a long battle, we have won a victory for all the other families suffering from factory farm pollution,” said Norma Caine, a WebsterCounty resident who has been a leader in this fight for nearly a decade. “ We hope other citizens will now be able to speak up, and protect communities throughout Kentucky from this kind of pollution—for our families and our future.”

A Fowl Stench in Kentucky

In response to my posting about CAFOs (factory farms) in upstate NY, I heard form Wilma Gilbert in Kentucky. Wilma says the following about a situation she is facing in her neighborhood in Kentucky with CAFOs:

Wilma Gilbert said...
Eileen, In ky we are suffering from the stench of two broiler houses of half rotten chicken carcasse and debree that was scattered in a field 50 feet from our home, it has been 24 days now and we still cant get out of the house for very long. This rotten stuff had never gone thru the decomposter, now let me tell you the worst , several tractor trailor loads of chickens went out of the same houses for market, I followed one truck and thought I would die from the smell, can you imagine eating chickens that had been running in there , we have had every official that we know to call, but nobody has the athority to do anything,. this has been going on for years, we have gone from a wonderful water well 100 percent pure to a 101 bacteria count and 3.1 e coli count, We are desperate and cant get any help for this, As far as we know the agriculture dept has the only athority . As far as we know a little scolding is all the farmer gets and we are left living in torment Thanks for reading Wilma Gilbert

Here's what the National Resources Defense Council says about the rise of broiler houses in Kentucky: http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/factor/stken.asp
There is a lack of a regulatory environment at the state level for water pollution caused by broiler houses, which Wilma speaks to in her posting.

I'm trying to get in touch with Wilma to find out more. Wilma, if you are out there, please post some contact information. I'd like to monitor the situation on my blog and get the word out. I'm wondering if the Kentucky Sierra Club could help out in an effort to address your local situation?

http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/factor/stken.asp




America's Animal Factories
How States Fail to Prevent Pollution from Livestock Waste
http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/factor/stken.asp


"Chapter 10

KENTUCKY

• Kentucky's geology makes large portions of the state particularly vulnerable to groundwater pollution from leaking hog manure lagoons.

• Kentucky is experiencing a boom in chicken houses, but they escape water pollution regulation.

In Kentucky, the number of farms raising hogs has dropped dramatically over the past 20 years as factory-scale operations have replaced family-size farms. The number of hog farms plunged from 33,000 in 1976 to some 2,500 in 1997.1 A trend toward larger hog operations, concentrated in a few pockets of the state, has led to big increases in overall hog production in some parts of Kentucky. Eleven counties have experienced a 25 percent jump in the number of hogs produced since 1982.2

Of Kentucky's approximately 2,500 hog operations in 1997, an estimated 50 operations had more than 2,000 hogs (an average of 5,850), and 70 operations had between 1,000 and 2,000 hogs.3

Kentucky's booming poultry industry is projected to expand dramatically in the next few years. Approximately 3.3 million birds are killed per week in Kentucky, raised in an estimated 1,100 broiler houses on an estimated 350 farms, according to projections for 1998. By the year 2000, the total number slaughtered will rise to an estimated 5.7 million birds killed per week in 2,100 broiler houses on an estimated 534 farms.4 Though nearby residents complain of intense odor problems and flies,5 the state's Economic Development Authority has provided significant tax incentives to two major food corporations to open poultry operations: Cagle-Keystone Foods and Hudson Foods (which has now been acquired by Tyson Foods, Inc.).6


Pollution Problems

Fifty percent of Kentucky is comprised of limestone, which is permeated with caves, sinkholes, and springs. In these limestone formations, known as karst, water runs underground through caves and aquifers and then emerges from springs into streams and lakes.7 Areas of karst geology are particularly sensitive to nutrient pollution and are ill-suited for siting hog waste lagoons or concentrated animal feeding operations.8 Unfortunately, Kentucky is now experiencing a proliferation of chicken houses and an increased concentration of swine operations in areas that are formed from karst, including areas close to Mammoth Cave National Park.9 Depositing animal waste in karst areas poses the following water pollution threats:
• Because underground water moves very rapidly and unpredictably, disease-causing bacteria from manure spread onto the ground have greater opportunity to enter groundwater and to contaminate nearby streams and lakes.10

• The rapid movement of animal waste into the groundwater limits the ability of soil and plants to take up nutrients, increasing the risk of nutrient pollution of groundwater and above-ground bodies of water.11

• Karst geography is by definition unstable. Sinkholes can form in unexpected areas, in particular where ground excavation occurs and where there is a change in the groundwater flow rate, both of which occur frequently with feedlot construction. Examples of the risks involved with lagoon construction in karst regions are documented by Dr. Nicholas Crawford of Western Kentucky University's Department of Geography and Geology in an August 5, 1998 report. He has documented a 1984 sinkhole collapse under a hog waste lagoon in southwest Barren County, which poured 2.4 million gallons of hog waste into the karst aquifer in less than five hours. Another sinkhole collapse under a hog waste lagoon in Logan County on April 29, 1991, drained more than one million gallons of hog waste into the karst aquifer, according to Crawford. This lagoon had a synthetic liner, but the collapse occurred above the synthetic liner. Crawford also documented lagoon leakage from two lagoons in Logan County which contaminated a spring.12


Regulatory Climate

Poultry facilities are excluded from any water pollution regulation under the state's interpretation of the Clean Water Act because poultry litter is not considered an industrial source of pollution. Despite documentation of well-water contamination linked to nearby land application of litter, the state agency claims it has no authority to take enforcement action against poultry factories.13

A major failing of Kentucky's environmental regulatory system has been its use of "no discharge" permits to CAFOs. Given the lack of water quality monitoring requirements for CAFOs and other assurances, this requirement is difficult to enforce. Moreover, requirements for waste management plans are not enforceable.

Even for processing plants, the "no discharge" permit is offered. For example, Cagle-Keystone's new chicken processing plant in Clinton County has been issued a "no discharge" permit and will be allowed to spray-irrigate up to 1.43 million gallons a day of plant wastewater on a hay farm near Lake Cumberland. The permit has no water quality limits, and inadequate monitoring requirements.14

Until recently, the state's regulation of swine was very lax. However, in response to the prospect of additional hog facilities coming into Kentucky, the Governor imposed a three-month moratorium in 1997, which was followed first by emergency regulations and then by permanent regulations for new factory swine operations with over 1,000 swine units. Existing swine operations of this size and other animal types (with the exception of dry litter poultry operations) are still covered under the old CAFO rules. The new regulations include notice to citizens in the vicinity, setbacks, restrictions of the land application of waste, and some additional regulatory requirements.15 However, among other deficiencies, the setbacks are inadequate, the nutrient management requirements are based on nitrogen limits rather than phosphorus limits, allowing more pollution to occur, and operators are not required to obtain training to run a factory farm.16 The Farm Bureau attempted to repeal the regulations with legislation in the 1998 session,17 but that effort was defeated. The newest version of the regulations, which took permanent effect in November 1998, requires that the owner of a livestock operation's pigs (typically an absentee food corporation) join with the owner of the operation's land (typically a farmer under contract to the corporation) in applying for a CAFO permit.18 This means that well-endowed corporations will share some of the responsibility for complying with environmental requirements with their contract farmers, who have historically shouldered the costly burden of manure-handling alone. Unfortunately, the Farm Bureau was able to weaken this important requirement from the proposed version, which made the corporations and the farmers equally responsible.19

The Kentucky Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet, the agency that issues permits under the Clean Water Act, currently permits 143 agricultural waste systems with 1,000 or more head of swine.20 The Cabinet estimates that there are between 50 to100 swine facilities that are required by law to get a water pollution control permit as a CAFO but have not been issued one.21 The failure to regulate these CAFOs stems largely from weak agency enforcement and a lack of state funding for inspectors, according to environmentalists.

The effectiveness of local controls is generally untested, because they are all relatively new. However, several counties have attempted to implement local controls on animal waste facilities"


Primary interviewee for this chapter:

Hank Graddy
Sierra Club-Kentucky
W.H. Graddy & Associates
P.O. Box 4307
Midway, KY 40347
Phone: 606-846-4905
Fax: 606-846-4914
e-mail: hgraddy@aol.com

Eat your veggies unless they are e-coli laden

Eat 5 a day, right? Fruits and veggies. What's going on, though, with e-coli in spinach (this fall), green onions (most recently at Taco Bell), tomatoes last year? Do you think twice when you reach for the bagged spinach in the produce section or bunch of green onions? The source of the e-coli is not entirely known, but factory farming and manure run-off into produce fields is one of the suspects. This is why I like to grow my own spinach and green onions in my backyard, but like most of us, I buy such items during the winter from the same source: California.

Here's Marian Burros from the NYT. I also include a link below for a recent article in Forbes about the green onion/produce scares.


September 27, 2006, The New York Times
Eating Well

"Tainted Spinach Brings Demands for New Rules
By MARIAN BURROS


THE latest outbreak of food-borne illness, traced to a virulent bacterium in bagged spinach, is being called a watershed moment for American industrial agriculture, a time of reckoning for industry and government and the public.

Critics say the factory farming system needs an overhaul, with produce farmers and processors being subject to the same sorts of mandatory rules as the meat industry to protect against E. coli O157:H7 and other harmful bacteria. More outbreaks of disease are now traced to produce than to meat, poultry, fish, eggs and milk combined.

The dangers can be compounded once produce is taken home. The casual way many consumers treat bagged, cut up fruits and vegetables — not washing them, leaving them unrefrigerated — increases the likelihood that even a low level of harmful bacteria can multiply and cause illness.

Some scientists say the sealed bags add protection; others believe the sealed bags, if mishandled, actually help bacteria to proliferate.

The source of the E. coli O157:H7 blamed in the current outbreak is unknown. It may be irrigation water reclaimed from sewage treatment. It may be unsanitary conditions on the farm. But there is increasing suspicion that the cause may be water runoff from the many cattle farms near the fields in the Salinas Valley of California, where produce tainted with the E. coli has caused eight outbreaks of illness since 1995.

Water contaminated with E. coli from cow manure may have been used for irrigation or may have been deposited on the fields by heavy spring rains and flooding.

Dr. Trevor Suslow, a microbiologist at the University of California at Davis, called this case “the catalyst, the tipping point.’’

“This is a culmination of incidents that have been going on for 10 years and cattle have become the primary focus,’’ Dr. Suslow said. “Data from the last 23 years clearly demonstrate the potential for crop contamination from pathogenic E. coli in the watershed.”

Dr. Suslow asked the question on many critics’ minds: “Should cows be raised in close proximity to produce? Ideally you would like to see them well separated.”

Dr. David Acheson, medical director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition agrees that cows may be a serious problem.

“I’m speculating, but there is a logical link between cattle and manure getting into the water,’’ Dr. Acheson said.

Would the outbreak have been prevented if the farmers and processors of salad greens were subject to the same regulations that meat processors have been under since 1997?

“Farms can do pretty much as they please as long as they don’t make anyone sick,” said Carol Tucker Foreman, a former assistant secretary of agriculture and director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, a consumer advocacy group.

The F.D.A. has jurisdiction, but little regulatory authority, over the produce industry, and has fewer than 2,000 inspectors for more than 120,000 facilities, 250 inspectors fewer than in 2003. Even some high-risk foods are only inspected every two to four years. The Agriculture Department, which oversees the meat industry, has 7,600 inspectors for 6,000 facilities.

On Monday the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a frequent critic of the food industry, and the Food Products Association, an industry group, joined with others in a coalition to lobby for more F.D.A. financing. The agency estimates that, taking inflation into account, the budget for its Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition will have fallen by almost 30 percent from 2003 t0 2007. Its staffing decreased by 14 percent.

The increased number of outbreaks of produce contamination has put even more pressure on the agency.

“This is kind of a new situation and we don’t have a routine inspection cycle,’’ said Mark Roh, the acting regional director of food and drug for the F.D.A.’s Pacific Region. “Farms traditionally have not been inspected even when they were bagging lettuce,” he said.

Dr. Acheson and Mr. Roh both say the agency is considering mandatory rules.

“If rules were mandatory rather than voluntary it might tend to enhance the industry’s effort at compliance,” said Mr. Roh. He said regulations could be modeled on the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point system used in meat, poultry, fish and egg processing plants in which preventive controls minimize hazards in food.

Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, agreed.

“We need mandatory standards, enforced across the system,” Ms. DeWaal said.

Compounding unsafe growing practices are unsafe processing and transportation practices. From field to home, produce may be left unrefrigerated several times: immediately after it is cut; as it sits on receiving docks at warehouses and supermarkets and when it is in display cases.

Often supermarkets do not maintain proper temperature in refrigerated cases for meat, poultry and produce. Cases should be kept at 41 degrees or below to prevent most bacteria from growing, but they often reach 50 degrees. At room temperature bacteria double every couple of hours.

Shoppers can make the problem worse. Many people assume that because some fruits and vegetables are displayed without refrigeration, all produce is safe at room temperature.

“Consumers need to treat cut or bagged produce the way they treat their meat and poultry for safety,” Ms. DeWaal said. “Pick it up last; get it home and in the refrigerator...." article continues


See also recent coverage in Forbes http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2006/12/07/hscout536490.html

CAFOs: Not in My Backyard

In May of 2005, I attended a local Sierra Club meeting that was focused on the problem of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOs--basically factory farms--and their environmental impacts. The meeting was packed with local people and USDA officials and lawyers. Since there was a lawsuit pending against Willet Dairy, an upstate CAFO, there was someone present from their lawyer's office taping the meeting to make sure nothing libelous was said against the CAFO. It was a tense, but informative meeting. I sat in the back and tapped out notes on my lap-top. I was asked several times "whose side I was on," if I was a reporter, and "who I worked for." When I said I was an academic, everyone left me alone. I guess if you're an academic writing a book about the public debates over agriculture, then you are not a threat.

I learned that there are about 700 CAFOs in New York state, and many of them are dairy farms in upstate NY. I heard eloquent testimony from Connie and Scott Mather from Locke, NY about the problems they have experienced due to a dairy CAFO near their home. Some of Connie's testimony is below, which she posted on the website of the organization Rural Friends of New York, which wages battles against the environmental destruction of upstate NY.

Like most of us, when I think of dairy farming, I always picture the small-scale dairy operations that we're all used to driving by here in upstate NY. I'm used to seeing a cluster of Holsteins standing outside the barn or picking their way through the mud toward the pasture. I also have dairy farmers in my family: Wiard and Jean Groeneveld, my maternal uncle and aunt from Sultan, Washington and their farmer son Christian Groeneveld, so the small-scale dairy operation is a cherished part of my mom's side of the family.

But small-scale operations are being replaced by industrialized operations. Read Connie Mather's testimony and read the report the Sierra Club and the Citizens' Environmental Coalition entitled "The Wasting of Rural New York State: Factory Farms and Public Health," 2005, available for PDF download at http://www.newyork.sierraclub.org/conservation/agriculture/index.html.

This is our backyard, folks!

Soil and Water Conservation Society
Connie Mather 5H Route 3, Locke, NY 13092
February 26, 2004

"Neighbors Perspective and Action Appeal
My name is Connie Mather. I am part of a growing group of citizens looking for ways to protect our families, our properties and our natural resources from the effects of CAFO’s (also known as factory farms), in rural upstate New York. I’d like to share with you the words of a famous politician on agricultural policy:

“... To put an end to our backwardness in agriculture and to provide the country with the largest possible amount of market grain, cotton, and so forth, it was necessary to pass to large-scale farming, for only large-scale farming can employ modem machinery, utilize all the achievements of agricultural science and provide the largest possible quantity of market produce. [we] took the path of organizing large farms because it enabled us, in the course of several years, to cover the entire country with large farms and provide the country with the largest possible quantity of market produce. “

This is a pretty good description of the course of agriculture in this country and in New York State over the last few decades. This comes from a speech of Joseph Stalin in 1946, in Moscow, as presented to a meeting of voters of the Stalin Electoral District. History tells us that the collective farms, so similar to the government subsidized corporate factory farms of the USA today, were a devastating failure. In the 70’s the USDA asked our successful USA farmers to make trips to Soviet Russia to help them. After studying the situation there, our agriculturalists recommended that the workers be given small plots of land that they could grow their own product on. The smaller plots out-produced the larger collective farms by such incredible numbers that it offered a whole new perspective on smaller farms as sustainable to the Soviets. I have to wonder why the USA, at great expense to the taxpayers, is now subsidizing and promoting the same kind of “advanced farming” that failed so miserably in the U.S.S.R, while doing little to support the sustainable smaller farms so integral to the health of our rural society.

Now I would like to address factory farming on a more personal note, from a neighbor’s perspective.

I live in a small hamlet called East Genoa, by what has become one of the largest dairy CAFO’s in the Northeastern United States. It is one of about 23 dairy CAFO’s that reside in the once beautiful Finger Lakes Region of the Empire State. My husband and I moved to this agricultural district and bought 10 acres in hopes of raising our son in a clean, safe environment. I was going to try to teach school and fulfill a lifelong goal of having a successful organic strawberry u-pick farm, with a possible second high-profit low yield crop to allow for back-up diversity if needed. I was raised on a farm in Pennsylvania and knew that I wanted to farm as a second profession after teaching for 10 years in Philadelphia. None of that was to happen. Staying outdoors, getting healthy enough, or affording water filtering systems and sources has made that impossible here.
First of all, most days of the year, the stench on my property and in my house is so bad that it makes us sick. I mean it makes us literally SICK. I didn’t need to see the research results of latest studies of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emissions to believe that the CAFO next door is emitting noxious gases. I didn’t need more research studies that showed the particulate matter and the ascetic acid from the silage bunkers are making it very near impossible to work outside or sleep inside in my house many nights.

Year-round spraying of liquid manure has made most of the fields around my home simply dumping grounds for seas of waste. In our community, upwards of 7500 bovine creatures contribute to huge cesspools that are uncovered and “geo” lined. For those of you who are wondering about “geo’ lined pits, that means no cement or synthetic linings, just holes dug into the ground. The detergents and any bad milk that can’t be sold is also dumped or piped into those open lakes of manure, along with the hormones and antibiotics tbat might be in the milk and manure. After that waste ferments for an undetermined amount of time, it is sprayed from the backs of huge tankards the size of tractor-trailers, onto the land or the snow. Summer, fall, winter, spring, it doesn’t matter. The waste is thrown on the fields. I am not a soil specialist, but somehow I can’t see whcre soil is benefiting from that kind of dumping. I see the runoff going into road ditches and small tributaries as I drive along the road. Those waterways feed the lakes of Cayuga and Owasco.

Huge trucks and large farm machinery barrel down the highways (Route 34 is yards away from my front door), The roads get wet with liquid manure, it dries and with the heavy traffic, becomes a fine dust that enters our home, our barn, our cars, and our lungs. Mowing the lawn, tending to our few animals or trying to garden is usually a “noxious affair”, after which we are sometimes sick with respiratory illnesses, headaches and even dizziness and nausea. This year, we couldn’t put up Christmas lights or decorations for the winter holidays because we couldn’t stay outside in the smell long enough to put up the lights.

In my opinion, the unnatural environment that the dairy creates has created an unnatural number of mosquitoes and flies.

Mosquito swarms seem to be a growing problem in our fields, yard and gardens. Could it be that the swarms of mosquitoes are coming from the thousands of tires that cover the silage bunkers kitty-cornered from our property? For the rest of the residents in Cayuga County, a fine of $35.00 per tire is levied if we have tires on our properties. That is because the County Health Department believes that tires lying around are breeding grounds for mosquitoes that carry West Nile Virus! Maybe those farm-exempt tires are marked somehow so the mosquitoes won’t breed there.

Swarming flies are also in abundance where we live. Even if the smell doesn’t get us if we try to BB-Q, the flies will swarm our food and us on a really busy spreading day. This type of swarming in excess is being sighted all around rural America where CAFOs proliferate.

One of the most disappointing aspects of living here is seeing the creeks, brooks and wetlands disappear.

Expanding numbers of livestock means expanded amounts of water consumed by my corporate neighbors. According to one management plan, each cow needs about 30 to 60 gallons of water a day. What that has meant for our communities is that wetlands are drained into large holding ponds, and small, once pristine brooks and creeks now are intermittently flowing, or diverted into holding ponds, or they are so contaminated with runoff that you can’t recognize them. Runoff of liquid wastes into our tributaries and sometimes directly into the Finger Lakes is common. I believe this runoff is inevitable because of the year round spreading and the volume of waste that needs to be gotten rid of by ever-expanding dairies. The marine life has suffered significantly with this violation and mismanagement of our precious natural resources. Currently, there is no mandatory testing of the waste from the CAFO’s in NY State before it is applied, so we have no idea what is ending up in our soil and water resources.

As a former educator, I believe that if you as professionals, educators and scientists alike, truly understand what is happening in the name of “advanced farming” in New York, you will take ethical and appropriate actions to rectify the policies and the lack of enforcement that allows these factory farms to assault every aspect of the lives of the rural peoples of New York State. The people of this region of New York have a strong heritage of political and social courage. This area was the center of the Women’s Rights Movement, an integral part of the Underground Railroad, and was the seed of strong religious movements. This heritage is reflected in the spirit of the real farmers and residents who are now mobilized and taking whatever actions they can to save our rural society and defend our Constitutional rights to protect our properties. Sustainable agriculture has a long, proud history of economic success, environmental stewardship,
conservation of natural resources and quality food production. We need your support.

The American Public Health Association has already asked for a moratorium on the building of all new CAFO’s until the empirical and anecdotal evidence can be considered. They have concluded, based on the research already reported, that there seem to be health risks to the workers on CAFO’s and to the residents of rural communities surrounding the CAFO’s.

I am here today to implore you, as Water and Soil Conservationists, to support that moratorium, and based on the very credible research already established, to take this a step further, and

CALL FOR A MORATORIUM ON ALL EXPANSION OF EXISTING FACTORY FARMS UNTIL THE EPA, DEC AND STATE AND COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENTS CAN MAN THEMSELVES WITH ENOUGH PERSONNEL AND ENFORCEABLE REGULATIONS TO ENSURE THE HALT TO THE DESECRATION OF NEW YORK’S NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE HEALTH OF ITS RURAL SOCIETY."
--Connie Mather

Got (Organic) Milk?

Parade Magazine, that Sunday morning paragon of wisdom, has broached the subject of organic milk production in the U.S.. In their weekly soundbyte for Dec 3rd, 2006, they point out that organic cows in the U.S. can't keep up with demand from companies wanting organic milk products. U.S. food companies wanting to use organic milk are considering the importation of powdered organic milk from New Zealand and/or using soy milk from China or Brazil. Bad news: fuel costs to import the milk.

America’s dairies can’t produce enough.

By Lyric Wallwork Winik
Published: December 3, 2006, Parade Magazine
[In the News]

The Problem With Organic Food

"The U.S has about 9 million dairy cows, but fewer than 150,000 qualify as “organic”—so the makers of organic products must be resourceful. With organic food sales up 20% in recent years, at least one company is using soy milk from China and Brazil, and others are considering powdered organic milk from New Zealand. The good news for environmentalists: Organic means no pesticides were used. The bad news: Importing food from afar takes more fuel to get it to our plates."

It's good to see this coverage, but the question not answered in this soundbyte, is why are there fewer than 150,000 organic milk cows out of the nation's 9 million cows? Milk production in the U.S. is set up on the industrialized model. Most loans are for capital expansion for large dairy operations. Cummins from a Mother Jones article http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2006/04/organic_milk.html (see below) points out that “there’s a huge demand for organic products which has caused a shortage in supply because our public policy doesn’t help farmers make the transition [to organic]. So you either lower the standards or import from overseas.” What's tough about going organic? You can't use industrial feeds or fertilizers for three years; there are clear expenses involved in the transition. The article also discusses whether or not organic "mega-farms" should be called organic since they do not necessarily comply with pasture regulations (letting dairy cows graze for some of their food). In essence, large-scale organic dairy farms mean the cows are kept inside and fed the organic feed and no bovine growth hormones are used, which is good, but it defeats the purpose of the smaller-scale, pasture feeding operations that most imagine when they think of an organic dairy farm. Read on for more....

This does not mean that one should stop buying organic milk, but with the rise of large-scale organic milk operations and the USDA's allowance for that, it's important to think about what we are really buying when we buy organic: small-scale, local organic or large-scale industrialized organic? Large food companies have figured out that organic is profitable (Wal-mart & organics, fo instance)--so the farmers that supply these large chains are doing what they can to meet organic standards and cutting the sustainable and eco-friendly part out of the organic equation. As many small-scale organic farmers have argued, this is antithetical to the very idea of organic agriculture.

So here are a cornocopia of articles about organic milk production and the latest trend: large-scale "organic dairy operations" (an oxymoron). I'll try to keep this thread going about "what does organic really mean?" I also strongly recommend Michael Pollan's book _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ as he takes up this question in a thoughtful fashion. A great read! He distinguishes between small-scale organics and industrialized organics (EarthBound farms, for instance--the makers of the baby cut carrots and mixed green lettuce in a bag).


http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2006/04/organic_milk.html
News: Can mega-dairies whose cows rarely get out to pasture still be called "organic"? And where's the government oversight?
By Cameron Scott April 26, 2006

2. “Wal-Mart’s Organic Offensive”
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2006/nf20060329_6971.htm

3. See also Business Week article on “The Organic Myth” Learn about Stonyfield Farms--how is their organic yogurt produced? Industrialized organic or small-scale organic?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_42/b4005001.htm

4. http://www.uh.edu/ednews/2006/bglobe/200603/20060327farms.htmlThe Boston Globe
Monday, March 27, 2006 "UNH sees organic future for farms." See what one university is trying to do about promoting organic farming in the sustainable tradition. This is notable as most dairy science programs do not stress organic milk production.

The Future of Food in 2007

Nothing less than the future of food in the United States will be debated in the coming year: 2007. The United States is due for a New Farm Bill. Most folks don't worry about the Farm Bill, thinking, of course, that there is no reason to think about it unless one is a politician in a rural state, a farmer, a grocery store chain owner, a large commodity trader, or an executive in a Big Food company. After all, Farm Bill or not, there will be still be (we hope or believe) the plentiful food supply we are all used to since WWII. Well, guess what, by ceding the formation of the farm bill to politicians and powerful special interest groups, we (yes WE--and I include myself in this number) have worked to ensure what the Community Food Security Coalition has referred to as "an unfortunate legacy of fewer farmers, lost farmland, unhealthy and hungry children, and polluted water and air" (Community Food Security News, Fall 2006). Yes, food is still fairly cheap compared to other commodities and readily available for many who can afford it, but at what cost to the environment, to public health, to small farmers?

Well, there is something we can all do about it--endorse the Kellogg Foundation's coalition project "The Farm and Food Policy Project," which we can all learn more about at:


http://www.farmandfoodproject.org/

I'm also posting the statement from the website. For those of us who do work with Food Politics issues in our Writing 205 courses here at Syracuse, this may be an interesting debate to engage in with our students: the question of how public policy has helped to create the loss of the small farm, the rise of the global obesity epidemic, the continuance of hunger in the U.S. and elsewhere, and the loss of farm land to overdevelopment and poor community planning. Researching the formation of this policy and its impact will be an interesting project and an eye-opener. Illiteracy about agriculture, about agricultural policy is at an all-time high in our nation because most of us have bought into the theory that food is simply there--cheap (relatively speaking), plentiful (always there), safe to eat (think twice about it since the latest spinach debacle), and safely produced (let's talk about pesticides, genetically modified organisms and migrant labor exploitation). There's plenty of good to go around, too. I'm not trying to be totally gloom and doom: the resurgence of local and regional farmers' markets, the rise of local organic agriculture and community-supported agriculture, urban community garden projects, school food learning projects and community gardens, the Slow Food movement. But we have a long ways to go to make those localized programs more a part of the larger national food framework.

Here's the statement:


"The Farm and Food Policy Project

A diverse coalition of family farm, sustainable agriculture, rural, public health, anti-hunger, environmental, faith-based, and other groups is forming to shape the 2007 Farm Bill.

The cross-sector approach of the Farm and Food Policy Project (FFPP) reflects a commitment to policy reforms that address the full spectrum of public needs addressed by this critical piece of legislation.

This broad and growing coalition believes that by working together, it can make real progress toward supporting family farms and local communities, improving health and nutrition, ending hunger, and increasing biodiversity and improving the quality of our soil, water and air.

Underlying the project's dialogue is a shared set of beliefs and values, which are:
• A widespread and diverse family farm system benefits rural communities and society as a whole;
• Extensive hunger and food insecurity in the United States are unacceptable;
• Strong stewardship commitments are key to maintaining farm and food systems into the future that will promote environmental and public health for our children;
• Stimulating new markets and restoring competition to the marketplace are vital to a fair, sustainable food system;
• Rectifying historic patterns of discrimination and making farm and food policies more responsive to an increasingly diverse society are critically important; and
• Rural and urban communities can work together to create a healthier food system.

The FFPP believes that all the major sections of the Farm Bill - commodity, nutrition, rural development, credit, conservation, research, and energy - hold significant opportunities for crafting more cost-effective and higher-impact policies that can increase farm profitability and improve the health of individuals, communities, and the environment.

In November 2006, FFPP will release a public statement - endorsed by a broad public interest coalition - identifying core priorities and opportunities for innovation in four areas:

1.) Advancing a new generation in farming and fostering market-based solutions

2.) Reducing food insecurity and enhancing public health

3.) Capitalizing on rural community strength to enhance economic viability

4.) Rewarding stewardship and improving environmental quality."

The organization plans to release a more specific statement about how they will influence the Farm Bill in the next week or so, so I will continue to blog about this. I'm also working on a chapter in my book _New Agrarian Rhetorics_, which will consider the public debate over this Farm Bill and past ones.

If you eat, you have a stake in agriculture.

Creative Shuttling

John Trimbur notes that ". . . U.S. linguistic culture produces a systematic forgetting of the multiple languages spoken and written in North America and thereby constitutes a key source of American ambivalence toward multilingualism" (577). As he goes on to show, there was nothing un-systematic about that "forgetting." In essence, the forgetting was a form of cultural suppression. Trimbur argues for a transnational perspective to assess the status of other languages in the U.S. in relation to English: "To understand the cultural exchanges that shaped U.S. linguistic culture--its linguistic memory and its habits of forgetting--requires a transnational perspective that enables us to see how U.S. English took shape in relation to other languages" (579).

One of the key historical figures he uses as a reference point is none other than Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was worried about the Germans taking over and "Germanizing" the culture (instead of Anglifying it). He paraphrases Heath's analysis of the pattern in the U.S. "where the language of non-English-speakers who are seen to pose a social, economic, or political threat becomes the 'focus of argument' about linguistic status and political legitimacy (10)" (580). In Franklin's time, it was was the Germans. It is now Spanish-speaking people. We are experiencing such a moment with the hostility toward Spanish-speaking in many parts of the U.S., which is fueled by a sense of "social, economic, or political threat." Immigrants coming from Mexico and Central America (documented and undocumented) to take jobs in the U.S. has caused the kind of xenophobia that Franklin exercised about the Germans. Cities and towns have passed "English-only" ordinances or have exerted more localized attempts to control language such as hanging "English-only" signs in businesses. Meanwhile, such analyses of "linguistic threat" fail to address how North American policies have created such transnational labor migrations (NAFTA, for instance).

These systems of reaction to language difference (coupled with other kinds of difference) have shaped our educational system into a monlingual language environment: "Since the overturn of the classical curriculum and the establishment of graduate education on the German model in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the U.S. university has drastically curtailed the educational role of languages other than than English--whether Greek and Latin in the old-time American pietistic colleges or German for the Americans who went to German universities to get PhDs. Instead English has become the unquestioned medium of instruction and the vernacular of modernity identified with science, technology, and the professions" (583). Trimbur identifies the cultural, social, and economic structures that lead to monolingualism in U.S. culture, but I wonder, too, the interplay of cultural, social, and economic forces with specific individual choices. What is the mix here between taking on a new language (L2 or L3) and maintaining a tie to one's home language (L1)? What about that process?

Trimbur argues, in the end, for addressing "the status planning of languages and an additive language policy whereby all students as a matter of course speak, write, and learn in more than one language and all citizens thereby become capable of communicating with one another in a number of languages, code-switching as appropriate to the rhetorical situation. The goal such a national language policy, I believe, goes beyond a discourse of linguistic rights to imagine the aboliton of English monolingualism altogether and the creation in its place of a linguistic culture where being multilingual is both normal and desirable, as it is throughout much of the world" (587).

These sentiments are echoed throughout all of the readings. Canagarajah argues for the metaphor of "shuttling" back and forth across languages. His argument is that we should study the engagement with language and writing as a "movement" rather than as a static process. We should

"study the movement of the writer between languages; rather than studying the product of descriptions of writing compentence, we would study the process of composing in multiple languages; rather than studying the writer's stablity in specific forms of linguistics or cultural competence, we would analyze his or her versatility (for example, life between multiple languages and cultures);rather than treating language or culture as the main variable, we would analyze his or her versatility (for example life between multiple languages and cultures); rather than treating writers as passive, conditioned by their language and culture, we would treat them as agentive, shuttling creatively between discourses to achieve their communicative objectives" (591).

His study of Sri Lankan Professor K. Sivatamby demonstrates this principle of "shuttling" creatively across Tamil and English for a variety of publication contexts. Dr. Sivatamby makes several rhetorical/linguistic choices to fit the contexts and audiences that he is addressing. One of the points that most interested me was how Dr. Sivatamby compensated for the dearth of library materials by managing genre constraints: avoiding a traditional literature review and engaging in his analysis quickly, using ethnography as well.

In essence, Canagarajah models the kind of analysis we can do of multilingualism and writing; however, a key constraint occurs when the researcher is not fluent in the writer's language (a further issue).

Matsuda's essay is an interesting counterpart to Berlin and other histories of rhetoric and writing instruction where international students are not a focal point or even much mentioned. This is, perhaps, another linguistic suppression: "The history of international ESL students in U.S.higher education goes at last as far back as 1784. . ." (644). In discussing the successive waves of international students, Matsuda sketches a view of the language curriculum that is tied as well to national policies and social and economic forces (WWI and WWII). I found it particularly interesting to see the discussion of how different colleges and universities handled the "integration" or "segregation" of international students (placement, credit-bearing and non-credit bearing courses, students "sprinkled" throughout sections or grouped together). I found Matsuda's historical analysis of linguistic homogeneity and international students to be very fruitful as it assesses the inner workings of linguistic "containment."

Matsuda ends with this analysis: "To work effectively with the student population in the twenty-first century, all composition teachers need to reimagine the composition classroom as the multingual space that it is, where the presence of language differences is the default" (649). Again, to echo my previous posting, what does it mean to reimagine the composition classroom as the multilingual space?" Just a couple of ideas:

--assignments that describe and analyze multilingual contexts?
--texts that are multilingual and in translation?
--research that involves multilingual texts?
--overlapping/linked courses in language and composition?
Others???

Works Cited:

Canagarajah, A. Suresh. "Toward a Writing Pedagogy of Shuttling between Languages: Learning from Multilingual Writers." _College English_ 68.6 (July 2006): 589-604.

Matsuda, Paul Kei. "The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition." _College English_. 68.6 (July 2006): 637-651.

Trimbur, John. "Linguistic Memory and the Politics of U.S. English." _College English_ 68.6 (July 2006): 575-588.

Multilingualism: a few additional questions

Laura's blog is chock full of interesting questions for us to consider in 601 on Tuesday. As I read over the special issue of CE July 2006 again, I kept wondering what a writing program cognizant of multilingualism--at all levels-- would look like?. As all the articles remind us, in one way or another, we are in disciplinary and programmatic settings where multilingualism is not necessarily valued--where the assumption is that linguistic competence is demonstrated in English. While many in our field will profess an allegiance to valuing various aspects of diversity, do we really value linguistic diversity? How is that defined? And what would a multilingual writing curriculum look like? I'm not asking this idly. I'm really wondering how to set up a first-year course and a writing curriculum that would work to value multilingualism?

I've had a number of classes where most of my students were multilingual. These were so-called "basic writing" classes at the community college and state university where I taught. Although I tried hard to acknowledge my students' facilities across languages, we ended up focusing on English. I tried to mine their language competence in other areas and drew on my own experiences as an exchange student trying to become fluent in French. Yet I feel I didn't do much beyond the anecdotal to do anything very deep with language study and multilingualism. I simply didn't know how, and when time was limited, I fell back on what I could do and what I knew best. I wonder what I missed out on, and I am also aware of my own limits when it comes to achieveing any sort of multilingualism. I took six semesters of college French, studied in France for a semester, and I have studied Spanish off and on for a number of years since high school (always losing ground because I don't keep up). It's so typical for many of us in the U.S. to feel linguistic security in being "English-only" speakers. I don't like that about being American. I can't believe how many times I met people in Europe and in Central America who spoke three or four different languages. Yet in America, we can get away with just one language and feel absolutely fine about it. Right now, I've been studying espanol in my spare minutes because I'm bound for Mexico in a few weeks, and I want to talk to people instead of making them reach over the linguistic divide to talk to me in English. Once again, I'm seeing my own limits as a student of more than one language: struggling to remember how to pronounce words, conjugate verbs, remember articles (feminine of masculine).

What I also wondered as I read through the articles again is how the question of multilingualism is also constructed/affected by the way "foreign language" instruction is handled in the United States--postponed until later in a child's education when developmentally mastering a language is much harder? And there is also the question of America's position as a global superpower and the assumption that English will be the language that everyone will strive for because of America's economic position. Linguistic economics. So composition studies reflects those assumptions rather than being unique in its expectations. A reform of composition studies would likely necessitate a reform of the whole of language instruction (K-12, too) as well, but in the meantime, we could do a lot more as a field.


It was said that 1 in 4 people in the U.S. are multilingual. So if we sort that out in our classrooms, will we find the same statistics?

I have more to say and some notes to post, but it is late, and I have to get to sleep. Don't believe the time stamp on this blog posting. The time stamps have been way off lately.

Stalag 7A and Life as a POW during WWII

Dr. Sidney Thomas of the Nottingham Senior Living Community in Jamesville, NY gave a captivating lecture to over 50 people this past Wednesday. The Writers' Group, which I have facilitated at the Nottingham for the past six years, sponsored his lecture, and I had the pleasure of introducing Dr. Thomas. Dr. Thomas was Private First Class Sidney Thomas of the U.S. Army infantry during WWII. He and four other men were captured by German soldiers in a foxhole after the allied invasion of Germany. They were transported to Stalag 7A where they were kept for five months until the end of the war. When Dr. Thomas was captured and interrogated by an English interpreter working for the German command, he was asked for his religious background. He answered with no compunction that he was Jewish despite his friends warning to not do so. He was treated no differently than the other soldiers, for the most part, the Geneva Convention mostly followed. He gave his name and rank, but no other information.

More on Stalag 7A is available at:


http://www.303rdbg.com/pow-camps.html#stalag7a

Stalag 7A was not a luxury hotel: near starvation rations, no heat, no showers. Dr. Thomas took one shower during the five month period. He later thinks about what the "showers" meant in Germany--the death campus and those told to strip and take a shower. Fortunately, the shower was just that--a real shower, not a cover for the gas chambers. He didn't mention lice as a daily feature of life, but we could imagine what no bathing meant. The prisoners lived on potato soup and ersatz bread. They were kept from starvation by eating food from the Red Cross packages that came through occasionally. They traded the cigarettes that were in the Red Cross packages for bread that German civilians had when they were sent out on work details to Munich.

Having met others who were kept in the prison camps who were mostly aviators (officers), I find it interesting to see how an enlisted infantry man like Thomas was treated. The officers usually were not sent out on work detail. The prisoners in 7A who were enlisted men (not officers) were regularly sent out on work detail to Munich, which had been severely bombed. They were supposed to pick up bomb debris, but as Sidney put it, they were so weak from hunger that they were totally ineffectual. They also were not going to help out the Nazi regime more than they had to, doing only the minimum. According to Sidney, the German guards, mostly middle-aged men, did not really care that much. They were not paying real close attention when the GIs traded cigarettes for bread or when they poked around at picking up debris. Sidney told of a German woman passing him and putting a bun in his pocket and saying nothing. He still wonders to this day what she was thinking and why she was helping him. He also talked to German women who asked him what American prison camps were like since they had husbands incarcerated there. "They are getting more to eat than you are, " said Sidney with conviction.

As the war approached the end, Sidney and some of his fellow GIs were told to live in railroad cars in the Munich train yards. The prison camp was overcrowded with prisoners who had been moved from other camps as the allies advanced. Sidney now looks back on the "train cars" with some trepidation for the cars were how so many Jews were transported to the death camps. But Sidney and his fellow GIs survived living in the train cars, locked in every night and only let out when there were bomb raids on the yards. This was the most terrifying moment for Sidney and fellow GIs as there were no bomb shelters for them. They hid in ditches while allied bombs fell. All miraculously survived.

As the Americans neared Munich, Sidney and his fellow GIs were able to move about more freely. The German guards deserted and even offered them their weapons, which they feared taking since doing so might be a provocation. The only time Sidney felt afraid was when they saw some uniformed SS men in the town center glaring at them. Fortunately, nothing happened. At that point, the Germans knew defeat was imminent, and he supposed the SS men had had enough of the killing or were out of ammunition that day.

I was struck by how unafraid Sidney said he was in German custody. The Geneva Convention still held then (look at what a shambles it is now), and the imprisoned men were confident of the end of the war and allied victory. While he was made to work, he was not threatened or goaded into working past capacity. The worst was the near starvation. The prisoners thought about food all the time. The main subject in the camp was food, not the usual "sex and gripes about the Army," which Sidney said was the standard fare when they were fighting the war. Other prisoners were kept there, too: French, English, Russians.

When the American motorized divisions roared into Munich, Sidney ran alongside a tank and waved and was recognized as an American GI by one of the soldiers. They soldier said: "Hey, buddy, where the hell are we? " The soldier on the tank had no clue they were taking Munich. This was typical, according to Sidney. "The grunts never knew where they were. Only the officers. You moved out and followed orders. Later, you figured out where you were after you got there."

Sidney's also described various ethical dilemmas he faced in the camp, which I can describe in another posting. Again, I feel fortunate to be part of the Nottingham community where presentations like this one--an interaction around life experience and living history--is a regular event. I also feel fortunate to have met a new colleague. Dr. Thomas is a retired SU faculty member (1961-1985 he taught here).

Writing Space(s)

It's such a pleasure to read Jay Bolter's second edition of _Writing Space_. He skillfully moves between an analysis of digital culture and print culture, moving back and forth across time and history to the almost current moment. I like how he places papyrus and codex alongside hypertexts. The juxtaposition is highly effective as it demonstrates his principle of remediation. What I'd like to do here is highlight some definitions in the first couple of chapters. My purpose is to anchor myself moreso in some of his claims/statements.

First off, the idea of writing spaces and space, the focal point of the title and much of the book.

Bolter argues that the spatial metaphor for writing and reading is as culturally powerful now as it has ever been" (12). When we speak of the Internet, we talk about "cyberspace." We speak of "visiting" websites (introducing the idea of "traveling" from one place to another). I think of a recent post I wrote that invited people to visit "Tanya's place," her blog in the "blogosphere." A writing space "is a material and visual field, whose properties are determined by a writing technology and the uses to which that technology is put by a culture of readers and writers. A writing space is generated by the interaction of material properties and cultural choices and practices" (12).

Now what does this all mean for electronic or digital spaces? Bolter says "[t]he space of electronic writing is both the computer screen, where text is displayed, and the electronic memory in which the text is stored. Our culture has chosen to fashion these technologies into a writing space that is animated, visualy complex, and malleable in the hands of both writer and reader" (13). Later, when I blog the info. about hypertext and hypermediation, this idea will come out further.

Bolter notes at the end of Chapter 1 that "[w]ith any technique of writing--on stone, on clay, on papyrus or paper, and on the computer screen--the writer may come to regard the mind itself as a writing space. The behavior of the writing space becomes a metaphor for the human mind as well as for human social interaction" (13).

Also, present in Chapter 1 is a meditation on the types of rhetoric that are out there about "the future of print" (4-5). There are the enthusiasts who predict the "end of the book" and the triumphant ascendacy of digital environments (Kurzweil, for instance, see Bolter, pp. 4) and then there are critics who discount the idea that print culture will be overtaken by digital environments. Bolter cites writer Annie Proulx's 1994 comment that no one will want to read a novel on a "twitchy screen" (5). In some ways, Proulx is too easy a mark. It's easy enough to prove her wrong when electronic books are available and Questia online holds many scholarly books available for access through subscription (not to mention digital/hypertext novels). Among the critics are the critical boundary setters who insist on "sensible limits to the computerization of culture" (5), Slouka, for instance. There seem to be the elegaic apocalyptics such as Birkerts who lament "the passing of the traditional literary culture" (6).

Bolter has highlighted the extremes here, and his purpose is not to indicate whether he thinks one is true over the other. Rather, his point is to avoid siding with specific predictions or wallowing in them, but to instead ask a more complex and interesting question about how we can "try to understand the current relationship between print and digital media" (7).

"It is not a question of seeing writing as an external technology force that influences or changes cultural practice; instead, writing is always a part of culture. It is probably best to understand all technologies in this way; technologies do not determine the course of culture or society, because they are not separate agents that can act on culture from the outside" (19). In other words, we need to avoid technological determinism, the idea of "technology" as an external force driving society when it is a human creation with particular goals and outcomes (not necessarily visible or understandable). I hear this same kind of deterministic rhetoric in relation to the idea of the "market" (the economy) as somehow external (an external force) outside of human endeavor. The "market" will tell us x, y, or z.

"Individuals and whole cultures do mold techniques and devices to their own purposes, but the material properties of such techniques and devices also impose limitations on their possible uses" (20).

One medium "remediates" the other, e.g., when there was the shift from "handwritten codex to printed book" (23). This is the process Bolter refers to as remediation" when " a new medium takes the place of an older one, borrowing and reorganizing the characteristics of writing in the older medium and reforming its cultural space" (23). The new medium brings with it specific aspects of the old one but "also makes an implicit or explicit claim to improve on the older one" (23).

Finally "[t]he best way to understand electronic writing today is to see if as the remediation of printed text, with its claim to refashioning the presentation and status of alphabetic writing itself" (26).

As Bolter points out, we live in a media saturated culture where "claims of greater immediacy are constantly being made, as new and older media view for our attention" (26).

What I really like about his first two chapters is the attention to language and terminology AND rhetorics of technology. He doesn't fall into the well-worn trap of the critic or the determinist/enthusiast. He stays true to the research question that drives this project: understanding the relationship between print and digital texts.

There is way more to say, but I have to go to the craft store to find mermaid stickers for Autumn. More later....

Escaping to the library

Chris and Susan's library stories (in response to my post on being read to) made me think of the libraries of my childhood: the Cashmere public library, the Vale Elementary school library, and the rural circulating library we had access to in my hometown. Here are some stories, some of which I've written down in the past and some newer ones:

The Cashmere public library is a building the size of a small two bedroom ranch house, its shelves filled with books shrouded in crackling plastic dust jackets. There were five sections: the children's, the young adult, the adult fiction, and the adult nonfiction and reference. Small tables with fake varnished wood tops and vinyl chairs provided seldom-used reading space. Sheila Ogle, town librarian, presided over all, her beehive bobbing efficiently over the stacks of books she checked out to schoolteachers, farm wives, migrant farm workers, and gangly farm kids like me. There was something open and refreshing about Sheila. The previous librarian whom my brother and I had nicknamed Mrs. Applefuss, had been a retired school teacher, stooped, frail with a gray bun, orthopedic oxfords, and a prominent red apple brooch that clasped the top button of her shirtwaist. Checking out a stack of books with Mrs. Applefuss had been an experience in correction as she frequently marked misspellings and omitted words on library check-out slips. In contrast, Sheila was young and chatted breezily as she checked out books. Petite and only twenty-six years old, she drove a 1969 lime green Camaro with wide mag wheels and white pinwalls. She liked to speed to work on Highway 2, dipping over the white line, a careless habit that earned her many tickets. Her husband Randy, a placid cornfed looking farm boy in the glass business often drove her to work to avoid the white line incidents.
Every weekday morning at nine a.m., Sheila, in her homemade miniskirts, unlocked the front door of the Cashmere library, her platform shoes making stompy clonks as she swung open the plate glass door, flung down the open sign, and began business for the day. I was one of Sheila's pet projects, a fixture in the young adult section of the library where I was determined at age twelve to read "the classics". Sheila was all for the idea of my education in the classics. When I showed her the "classic reading list" I had discovered on the back of the "What Katy Did" series, she encouraged the project, handing me copies of _Silas Marner_ and _Wuthering Heights_.
"Start here," she said, flicking back a strand of her streaked blond beehive.
I remember laboring over the books one dry summer on the farm, my jean clad legs swung over the side of the gold loveseat. Far away in a nineteenth century British world, people spoke proper, clipped English. What stayed with me most was Heathcliff's terribleness, his gnashing teeth.
"It's a terrible story," I remarked to Sheila after returning the book.
"It's a love story," she said.
Neither of us knew what we were talking about. Twelve years later I wrote my master's thesis on _Wuthering Heights_.
When I wasn't fumbling my way through the "classics," I read with abandon the books in the young adult fiction section. When I wasn't reading books, I hungered for them. I needed books like some of my classmates needed that first school recess of the day; they rushed outside as if they had been penned. Although I could choose books from the school library, I hesitated to exercise my full reading habits in front of my peers as my love of reading made me the object of teasing and ridicule.
The teasing began in the third grade when I checked out a four hundred page book about Paul Bunyan. I had wandered through the library, as usual, searching for books to take home to read in the evening. I passed shelf after shelf of thin, insubstantial books with bright racy covers and thin much-read tattered ones. I felt myself always in a state of perpetual disappointment at the "chapter books" that were thought appropriately challenging for elementary schoolers. Those chapters were mostly made of air, I concluded, as I sped over the white pages with scanty clumps of large print black letters and the large colored pictures or black and white drawings that were thought to be necessary for kids. I needed a long book. A book full of lines and lines of black print, few white spaces, and few or no pictures. The Paul Bunyan book sat plumply, importantly in the midst of the thin books. It felt solid and meaty in my hand. I checked it out and brought it back to the school room.

At the end of the day, I stood at the doorway of the classroom in the kid-line-up waiting to march out to the bus; idly, I wondered what my mother would cook for dinner that night. My big-headed but affable classmate Pat noticed the book as we stood waiting.
"How many pages?" he said, fingering the side of the book crooked in my arm.
I looked in the back and saw the book ended at page 430. "Four hundred and thirty,” I said, with no hint of bragging in my voice. I was as matter-of-fact about books as I was about peanut butter sandwiches and carrots sticks I found in my school lunch bag
. Pat seemed impressed, but Pat's companions the dark-haired, freckled David and sandy-haired Scott hooted: "430 pages, 430 pages?"
"How long will it take you to read that book?" Scott asked.
The question hung in the air as the dismissal bell rang, and we dashed through the hallways toward the bus area. My book crooked under my arm, I did my best to keep to a fast trot, far enough in front of Scott and David but not far enough to avoid their calls of "bookworm."
That night when I sat down in the living room after clearing the supper table, I read determinedly, my eyes flying over the words, scarcely caring about the story. It was full of embellishments and posturing, anyway: Paul chopping down whole forests with one stroke of his ax, eating huge stacks of flapjacks, fighting off bears and wolves. My father told better hunting stories. I fell asleep over the book, my mom shaking me gently at 10: 00 p.m. I climbed the bare wooden stairs to my room, the book heavy in my hand. With great effort, I awoke early the next morning and read more pages. I reached page 100 when it was time to get dressed and go off to school. Scott and David were waiting for me in the reading classroom that morning.
"How many pages, bookworm?"
"One hundred," I said primly, brushing past them on my way to my desk.
They danced a jig and slapped each other's hands, chanting "A hundred pages! A hundred pages! Bookworm read a hundred pages!"

As usual, in my reading course, I finished my vocabulary sheets, spelling test, and reading lesson early. I went to the back reading corner. The Paul Bunyan book felt heavier than I remembered it, and I looked longingly at the other books in the "book corner." I dutifully read 15 pages while my classmates finished their work and as Scott and David looked back and snickered .
Every school afternoon and evening that week, I read the Paul Bunyan book. I read it after school instead of playing outside, I read it after dinner instead of watching TV. I read it early in the morning while my sister still slept and the sun crept up over the ridge of the Wenatchee Mountains, the dawn making the room light enough for reading. During the day, I was tired and listless but resolved as I did my school assignments and played with classmates. I was getting the day's work out of the way. All my energies were focused on finishing the book. Each day for four days I read one hundred pages; I finished the last thirty on Friday morning--fifteen before breakfast, fifteen during reading class. I thumped the book down on the desk. and slumped in my school chair, my head awhirl with Paul Bunyan's and Babe the Blue Ox's feats.
"She's done," Scott whispered. She read the whole book!”
My other classmates took notice, and I was teased for weeks after that. "Eileen read 400 pages in four days. Bookworm!!" After that, the feat was increased to 600 to 800 then to 1,000 pages, my appetite for reading taking on elephantine proportions. For a while, when the reading class visited the school library, Scott and David followed me from shelf to shelf.. They peered over the stacks to comment on the thickness of the books I selected. After I set a book down, they'd sneak over and pick it up and quickly flip to the back page to see how long it was, announcing the page total and laughing. Although I pretended to ignore them, I could see that my love of reading simultaneously interested and bothered them.
Indeed, my reading habits made me unpredictable and unpopular with some of my classmates. I knew words that others didn't, and I had a habit of springing those words on them in sharp and unaccustomed ways. After a girl-boy chase and scuffle on the playground, little boys often scratched their heads, wondering why I'd called them "cretins" or "gargoyles," words I'd acquired form reading my parent's National Geographic magazines. I was always trying out those words when I could, stumbling over their pronunciations, rivaling in their importance without quite being sure what they meant. Words were my ladder, my way out.
My reading minimally disturbed my family; they worried I was too pale and deemed me the "house pansy" for the long afternoons I spent reading on the gold loveseat in the living room. But they liked to read, too, so their complaints were minor. On holidays and on long winter evenings, my father read whole books often in one sitting--long political biographies and historical works When he liked a book, he wouldn't put it down. "I'll annihilate it," he'd say and he'd stay up long past his farmer's prescribed bed time, even after my mom turned down the heat and the house grew cold and the only light shining was the living room lamp illuminating the floor where he lay on the carpet, his head propped up with a brown fake fur covered pillow. After midnight, he'd stagger up to bed, shaking with the cold, half-drunk on language and complex political plot and then he'd read in bed unless my mom protested too much.
My mother read pop-psychology books, diet books, books on theology , and turned us on to the phrases she was learning at the Yokefellow encounter groups she and my father attended at the Methodist church. We learned dream analysis, transactional analysis and "role-playing." We analyzed dream symbols and underwent meditation exercises. My mother grew more and more liberated as the weeks went by. She got a lock for her bedroom door and went up there every afternoon to spend time alone.
Sensing a break in the motherly status quo, I protested:. "What will happen if I fall down the stairs and break my leg?"
"I think I'd hear you fall down the stairs and scream even with the door locked," my mother said flatly. "You kids have to give me some time alone. I need to read and think."
I grew up believing all farm wives fought for the space to read and think.
My brother belonged to the Military Book Club, and he devoured books on World War II and piled up his hardback club acquisitions on the fake walnut paneled shelves in his room next to his ammunition reloading equipment. My brother lived for war stories, and his vocabulary was peppered with precise military terms often ill-pronounced. Confiscate was pronouned "confisticate" and magazine was pronounced "mazagine."
Even my sister, busy as she was with her piano playing and track meets, read her bible and fashion magazines, and she kept a journal under her mattress that I read and thought about, barely keeping myself from advising her about which friends she should keep and which she should eliminate.
Reading was a fortification against the sameness and monotony of farm life. A book took us places when we couldn't get there any other way, and it let us get into someone else's head for awhile.
Since my reading habits were such an object of fun for many of my classmates, I concealed the true volume of my reading by ordering titles from the rural circulating library book catalogue. My mother explained that the rural circulating library was an attempt to reach the kids and adults who lived "in the brush," too far away from libraries or book stores. I imagined these bookless kids living in log cabins or in lone farmhouses at the end of winding canyon roads. With the library just four miles away from the farm, I felt as if I were cheating by ordering those books and possibly denying them to farm kids like Trina and Sandy Wallace who lived up at the end of Ollalla Canyon without running water or electricity. The guilt only lasted so long. I received those paperback titles in brown paper envelopes like Christmas gifts from distant relatives. I fell upon them when I got home from school and read them long into the night. I read about teen girls and boys who attended boarding schools in Boston. I read about girls living in apartment buildings in New York City. They rode subways, walked city blocks, and dined at the automat. I was hungry for knowledge of how others my age lived. I hoarded these bits of information like a raven keeping a cache of shiny objects.

On Not Being Read To by Busy Parents

As noted in a previous blog post, in 601 we spent some time interviewing each other and taking down literacy histories and sponsorship stories last week. While walking in to campus today, I realized one important factoid that I forgot to share with Tanya while she was interviewing me.

My parents did not read to me when I was growing up. I have no memories (nada) of being read to by my parents when I was a child. I guess I should play the sad soundtrack/wispy violin music to accompany that revelation. When my parents were not working on our family farm or doing things for my siblings and I, they were reading for their own edification and pleasure. I guess it was expected that I'd watch and absorb the value of reading and eventually read on my own. My earliest literacy/reading memories, as I told Tanya, were of my parents reading the newspaper. They read the local paper _The Wenatchee World_ filled with stories about farming and local news, but they also took _The Wall Street Journal_. I remember them avidly passing the paper and discussing it with each other. Later on, we (my siblings and I) read the papers with them.

I had well-worn children's books, but I don't remember my mom reading to me at bed-time, and my Dad was probably "laid out" (as we used to say) on the living room floor after his 12 hour work day. I don't feel particularly bad about the not being read to realization. At the time, I didn't know that parents would read to their kids-I didn't think of it as an option or something I could ask for. I don't remember asking my Mom to read to me or lamenting the fact she didn't. I just remember wanting to learn to read myself.

Interestingly, I spent a lot of time reading to my "dolls" when I was about eight years old. I have several theories about this. One, I didn't know what else to do with those damn dolls, so I made them into "students." Two, I liked the idea of reading to someone (even inert dolls) and sharing books (maybe an attempt to enact the "being read to" exchanges I didn't have with my parents).

When I was in the third and fourth grade, we were read to (chapter books) by our teachers after lunch everyday, and I have great memories of my classmates and I sitting around bawling about the ending of _Where the Redfern Grows_ or clapping after we heard the final lines of_Follow My Leader_, a great story about a young boy recently blinded and his seeing eye dog named "Leader." These "serial installments" were a highlight of our days, and I don't remember anyone really acting out much during those reading sessions.

Yes, I read to my daughter. But I'm noticing she is increasingly impatient with Tom and I reading to her. She grabs the book and wants to "read" the parts she likes. So she is taking over. She is also "spelling" words. Copying down what she sees in books, and I'm not forcing her to use MLA documentation....

Linguistic variety

A useful summary/overview of linguists' responses to the Oakland proposal/ebonics, including McWhorter.

http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/ebonics/LingAnthro1.html

Check out Tanya's place

Head on over to Tanya's place at SecuringaSpace so you can see what she has in store for us tomorrow in 601.
She has some engaging questions that will keep us going and posted the CFP for the conference that inspired and solicited the _Rhetoric and Ethnicity_ volume. I've hopped around on the blogs, and I see Laurie is on a roll on her 601 project--she has posted some really useful notes on her Independent Reading and Writing Project. I also see others doing the same. It's exciting to see the reading/writing projects starting to appear on the blogs.

One question I asked on Trish's blog was how "whiteness" is at work in this collection either as a concept or as an identity construction.

I'm also curious about the term ethnic rhetorics in relation to cultural rhetorics? Is ethnic rhetorics a subset of cultural rhetorics? Why not use the term cultural rhetorics instead? Too non-specific?

Robert Danberg has posted some interesting comments in relation to my Smitherman entry. He raises McWhorter's work and his disagreement with Smitherman. Take a look.

A larger question I have is what role does the conference proceedings play in the field vs. an edited collection conceived in a non-conference setting? I'm curious about the different rhetorical situations that each respond to and the different kinds of intellectual projects/processes that result. A number of you commented on the conference paper feel to many of the papers--acknowledging it as a limitation and a genre issue to be mindful of while reading. When I've talked to scholars about things they have published in conference proceedings, I usually hear a bit of an apology--"it was a conference paper" kind of remarks. What is the value of publishing more occasioned writing? How is the intellectual community/interactive feeling of a conference represented in a proceedings (or not)?

A Rich and Flexible Resource

First off some definitions seem in order. Keith Gilyard in his "Preface" to _Rhetoric and Ethnicity_ defines ethnic rhetoric as language use "inflected with an ethnic difference" (v). He breaks down the definition further to account for "two directions for study":
ETHNIC RHETORIC
1) "attention to ethnic people employing any style of rhetoric, and 2) concern for verbal forms and discursive strategies unique or characteristic of particular ethnic assemblages" (v).

CRITICAL ETHNICITY
Gilyard discusses the debate over the use of race as a terminology. He argues that "given how saturated with conceptions of race our society is, that utilizing the semantic term race is unavoidable if one is truly interested in communicating with large numbers not only to contest racial reasoning but also to contest, in a concrete way, racial hierarchies" (ix). Critical ethnicity is a term Gilyard uses to describe "a search for the elements in various ethnic narratives that have the most political potential in a push for a more humane society, and it represents an impulse to share the fruits of that search with our students" (ix).

The volume that follows this introduction, then, is a enactment of critical ethnicity, addressing essay across two areas: History and identity and Pedagogy. As a conference proceedings from the Penn State Rhetoric conference, the volume gives a multi-faceted glimpse of the possibilities of ethnic rhetorics. Because this volume is a proceeding, though, we often only get a quick glimpse of an argument or a critical framework. I found myself wishing the authors had had more room to expand their thoughts and develop more historical background and analysis.

I found Smitherman's essay to be the most complete and compelling of the ones we read as a class. In "Meditations on Language, Pedagogy, and a Life of Struggle," Smitherman discusses the debates over the Oakland, CA school board's Resolution on Ebonics (issued in December 1996). She discusses the furor and reaction to the proposal while, at the same time, narrating a running history of language politics interwoven with some personal stories. As she points out, the use of "ebonics" was not radical: "They were simply proposing to teach the students and literacy and communication skills in the Language of Wider Communication in the United States, also known as 'standard English'" (5). The idea was to "use the students' home language as a bridge to move them to competence in 'standardized English.'" (5). Woven throughout her analysis are the reactions of prominent public figures who reacted negatively against the proposal. Interestingly, most of the responses seem to believe the school is trying to keep their students from success. Bill Cosby's infamous "Igno-Ebonics" comment...Ebonics in the eyes of these commentators is simly bad English, and the school district is racist for trying to utilized a language pedagogy that acknowledges the validity of students' home languages. In other words, language variety is perceived as a threat. The irony is that later in the article Smitherman shows that the innovative work of linguists and educators has had an effect on everyday people (p.11) when she cites an predominantly African American call-in radio show where the callers prove more informed than the host about language issues.


Ebonics, though, is a "term that has been around since 1973, having emerged during a caucus of Black scholars at a conference convened in St. Louis Missouri, by Dr. Robert Williams" (6). Ebonics, as Smitherman, explains "is not to be subsumed under 'English.' Rather it should be considered a 'parent' language in its own right, with 'descendant' languages in a number of regions around the world" (7). Turner's research on the impact of West African languages on the descendants of slaves in the Sea Island Communities of South Carolina showed a link between African languages and the English the slave descendants who lived there were speaking. These patterns were found more widely beyond the islands, too, a United States Ebonics (USEB).

Given the furor over Ebonics, Smitherman calls for scholarly and pedagogical work that understands "how and when the speaker or writer makes the decision to change the linguistic flow," citing Gilyard's _Voices of the Self_ as groundbreaking in addressing code-switching. She calls for a "systematic study of the language of Black women:" black women preachers, in particular. The biggest change she argues for, however, is that "high school and elementary teachers" need national credentialing standards that involve a course in language diversity. Yes, and college teachers, too.

As I read the article, I thought, too, of the need for a critical public scholarship on language issues--one that goes beyond the usual miss-or-mr. manners approach to language _Eats, Shoots and Leaves_ being a popular example or William Safire's usual pomp and bluster (sometimes he was/is funny). I think Smitherman is right that linguists and educators have had an impact on everyday folks' thinking about language, but when so many notables--Maya Angelou, for one, Jesse Jackson--speak out against ebonics, there is a huge gulf and a general public illiteracy about language issues and language variety.

I remember discussing these issues with my students in 205 course in 1997. I gave them an article about the actual methods being used in the school district, and they were incredulous that the controversy had blown up so much. As one student said, "this is a good teaching technique--common sense, in some ways."

When have people ever been "common sense" about acknowledging the richness of language when it comes to education? Most of us are schooled to think of language as a limitation, a constraint, not as a rich and flexible, multiple resource. I love Brandt's notion of literacy as a resource. I love Smitherman's discussion of language as multi-faceted, flexible, and as an instrument of beauty and expression.

Smitherman's essay was also beautifully written. I loved her line about her dad's old car "smoking" and "catching a flat." Her report of her grandmother's use of language: "If you don't do x or y," I'll beat you from Amazing Grace to Floating Opportunity" or " Genesis to Revelation."

How does our lower and upper-division writing curriculum promote an exploration language diversity? I'm assigned the Politics of Language course next year, so I'm hoping I can do more work in this area.

A State of Recovery

I'm still in a state of recovery from the cold of the year. It has been an awful experience. It started last Saturday and has remained with me, peaking on Wednesday when I was practically comatose in my living room recliner.

Anyway, I think I'm on the mend, but I'll defer my bigger blog entry on the Gilyard and Nunley readings until later this evening.

I do want to give a shout for Terri's blog where she posted her responses to the Deb Brandt questions. The 601 class interviewed each other about their reading and writing experiences and literacy sponsors on Tuesday (we reported out our "findings" to the class as a whole). Terri was out sick, so she posted her responses on the blog, and they echo many of the themes we discussed in class. We saw similar patterns across our literacy experiences as well as some interesting/unique stories and entry points into engaging literacy:
--parents sponsoring our literacies early on (most of us were read to by parents)
--an early interest in books and reading and even an "obsession"--some of us got into trouble for reading too much or going overboard
--interest in writing fairly early on and some early successes, in some cases

There were a lot of interesting factoids, too, about childhood writing and reading experiences:
--Tanya had early writing success--she won a writing contest at age six.
--Immy grew up in an intellectual family--her father was an English professor and her mother also was a writer/thinker.
--Laura was writing letters early on to public officials and reading history voraciously.
--Trish and her sister taught the children in their neighborhood how to read and learn.
--Laurie and her Dad were reading philosophy together and discussing it.
--I thought it would be a good idea at age six to copy down the words of library books I liked so I didn't have to keep checking them out of the library. My mother explained that this was plagiarism, and that it was "illegal." I was crestfallen and feared being arrested (I thought illegal meant you could be arrested immediately), so I stopped.


I'll let everyone post their notes/follow-ups, but it was a productive discussion, and we wished we had more time to take down our literacy histories. We also wished we could find ways to ask our students some of these questions. All of us left the discussion with a healthy respect for all the labor Brandt performed with 80 interviews and data to analyze/interpret. A huge amount of work.

We also discussed aspects of the Feminism and Composition readings, and I went on a historical tour/timeline of feminism that covered the blackboard in the seminar room. I refer to it as the "Central New York as hallowed feminist ground lecture." Trish and Tanya say they have notes about it, so if they would post the timeline at some point.....

More later....

Locational Feminism

I'm falling over fatigued and plagued with a head cold (no doubt I'm constructing myself in heroic terms here), but I just had to get to the keyboard to type in this quotation from Susan Stanford Friedman, which I really like:

"A locational feminism feminism is one that acknowledges the historically and geographically specific forms in which feminism emerges, takes root, changes, travels, translates, and transplants in different spacio/temporal contexts"(2).

I like this because it puts feminism in motion, into time and space rather than fixing a definition.

I also like the way she describes later in the article a way to account for the differences and commonalities between feminism as manifest in India in a specific example where women mandate "a quota of representation by lower caste women in the village councils of rural India" and the feminists who "demonstrate for reproductive choice outside a beleaguered abortion clinic in the United States." As Freidman puts it " both are political practices informed by theories of gender and social justice that are recognizably a part of a singular entity that we call 'feminism."

I really like the work Friedman is doing here to account for differences within feminisms in a way that does not dismiss or undercut different manifestations of feminisms.

I have more to say here about the geographically specific forms of feminisms she is addressing, but given the temporality of this response I'll make it brief. The articles this week make mention of "foremothers" in feminist composition studies. But I'd like to remind us of that we walk on grounds where our foremothers/fathers are not women in composition, but the early suffragists (Anthony, Stanton, Gage Truth, among others), the activists for abolition of slavery (Truth, Douglass, Tubman, May) the Haudosaunee elders among others who inspired the Iroquois Federation upon which our foundational (not anti-foundational) democracy is based This region is rich rhetorical ground, yet I think that is often forgotten. I'd like to think that cultural rhetoric would situate us in those discourses and that we'd be urged to steep ourselves in our social, historical, political and geographic location right here in Central New York and Syracuse, which, by the way, is part of the Onondaga Nation land claim.

g'night.

5 Textual Things

OK, I've been tagged more than once by those engaging in the "5 things" exercise. Here's my adaptation. I told Tom about this exercise last night, and he told me 5 "unrepeatable" things about himself, most of which I didn't know, so that was funny. Anyway:

5 "semi-textual" things you may or may not know:

1) The novel _Winter Wheat_ by Mildred Walker is my favorite novel. A friend gave it to me about eight years ago, and I've read it many times. I identify with the rural isolation and struggle portrayed in the novel.
2) I love the poem "To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy. Not a big revelation. It is on my office door.
3) I read _Jane Eyre_ every night I was in graduate school to escape from the theory I was reading and to put myself to sleep (sort of a novelistic Sominex). As soon as I graduated, I put away the novel. Sheer escapism, I guess, or maybe the fact that the Brontes were a carry-over from my master's program (My thesis was on Emily Bronte).
4) I like to read about WWII aviation. My brother got me into it when I was around ten and we memorized every German warplane in the Luftwaffe and every American counterpart. I can't identify most of them anymore.
5 plus). I once edited the memoir of a WWII bomber pilot ( Col. Jack Swayze) who flew many missions over Germany in a
B-24, affectionately know by the pilots as the "Crate." I keep running into WWII aviators in various walks of life because I regularly hang out with people over the age of eighty. I currently am running into WWII Prisoners of War (POWs). In the last few months, I have met two WWII POWs (one just last week who was in the infantry and spent 5 months in a stalag).
Given my preoccupation with war, it is perhaps an irony that I became active in the peace movement.