WR Prompt #4: Milk it, Baby!

Yes, yes I DO want you to get the most out of this class, out of college, out of life in general... BUT... That's not what this post is about.

This week's prompt is a little different. Consider the common expression "milk (something) for what it's worth"/ "She's milking this situation"/ "Go for it baby, milk it!"

Our contemporary speech is littered with verbal phrases/ metaphors/ parables etc. whose roots are agrarian and yet we use them in non-farm-related contexts.

Your assignment is:

1. Find 2 idiomatic expressions whose origin is in agriculture ("don't count your chickens til they're hatched") OR that has a relationship to the environment (to "turn over a new leaf"). My hope is that you will come upon these in your everyday life. You'll find that to find TWO is actually a piece of cake. The trick is in #2:

2. You are not allowed to repeat someone else's phrases. Check the blog before you post. I'll be making a list so that we can all "reap the benefits" of a concerted effort. This is both to see what you are able to come up with as well as an incentive not to procrastinate; the "early bird" will have it easy.

3. Once you have your two expressions, restate in your OWN WORDS what you think they meant when they came about (imagine in what context they were used- Ask yourself Who, What, When, Where, Why and How).

4. Do some research (wikapedia is fine) to verify your speculation (#3). You might be surprised at the origin of certain sayings. For ex."Come Hell or high water" comes from cattle ranching, in particular "the driving of cattle to railheads in the mid West in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In 1939 Paul Wellman published a book with the title Trampling Herd: the Story of the Cattle Range in America in which he wrote: “ ‘In spite of hell and high water’ is a legacy of the cattle trail when the cowboys drove their horn-spiked masses of longhorns through high water at every river and continuous hell between.” (http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-com1.htm)

4. Put them in the context of today's use. Discuss how it differs (if at all) from its source. Give your reasons for why you think the expression caught on in vernacular setting and why/ how the meaning evolved.

These instructions may seem long, but the ultimate result will be fairly quick compared to other weeks. As you all have already started seeing differently (i.e. thinking about your role in relationship to global systems, noticing what you previously overlooked, etc.), now I'm asking you to listen carefully to what you and others say. Our cultural heritage is rich in remnants of our past and they are not only important to informing our future choices but in teaching us to pay attention to our roots.

ps. (as if this wasn't long enough) I just wanted to mention that I'll add bonus points to anyone who surpasses the minimum requirement of coming up with 2 idioms or who comes up with idiomatic expressions from other languages (with the corresponding translation and cultural explanation, of course) -Reed

World Changing Post #3-Buying Better Food

Alyssa Olson

World Changing Post #3

Buying Better Food

I chose to read the article about buying better food because it coincides with what we have been discussing lately in lecture. I used to always go to whatever grocery store was closest and buy whatever was on sale. This is probably true for many college-aged students who don’t have much money to spend. I recently gave up my car and now depend on walking or using public transit to get everywhere. This ultimately made getting to the grocery store that much harder, but in the end was a great choice. I live in Kerrytown and now my options for buying food is either at Sparrow Market, which is locally owned and carries a lot of local products, the Farmers Market, or at Zingerman’s Deli which is also locally owned and carries a lot of Ann Arbor products. I tend to need to go grocery shopping more often but with these resources right around the corner it isn’t much of a hassle and I always have very fresh produce and cheeses at home.

The only down fall is that items tend to cost a little more than they would at the grocery store. In the article about buying better food they touched on this subject and stated that it is worth spending the few extra cents because you know exactly where the money is going and you also guarantee that that farmer or that local stores products will always taste better. It also instills a sense of community and value knowing that you are helping those around you. When you buy local everything tends to come full circle. As the article states the best way to buy better food is to grow it yourself. This is not always an option for those renting a home or living in an apartment but I know that in the Ann Arbor area you can rent plots of land in large gardens where you can grow whatever you want. It’s also very easy to grow chilies, tomatoes, and other vine plants in 5-gallon buckets on your front or back porch.

This article gave me a lot of other options to not only feed myself well but to also help my community. Living in Ann Arbor has exposed me to a lot of great ways to not only live green but eat green as well. As I was reading this article all I could think of was how Ann Arbor is pretty much the epitome of this concept.

World Changing Post #3-Buying Better Food

Alyssa Olson

World Changing Post #3

Buying Better Food

I chose to read the article about buying better food because it coincides with what we have been discussing lately in lecture. I used to always go to whatever grocery store was closest and buy whatever was on sale. This is probably true for many college-aged students who don’t have much money to spend. I recently gave up my car and now depend on walking or using public transit to get everywhere. This ultimately made getting to the grocery store that much harder, but in the end was a great choice. I live in Kerrytown and now my options for buying food is either at Sparrow Market, which is locally owned and carries a lot of local products, the Farmers Market, or at Zingerman’s Deli which is also locally owned and carries a lot of Ann Arbor products. I tend to need to go grocery shopping more often but with these resources right around the corner it isn’t much of a hassle and I always have very fresh produce and cheeses at home.

The only down fall is that items tend to cost a little more than they would at the grocery store. In the article about buying better food they touched on this subject and stated that it is worth spending the few extra cents because you know exactly where the money is going and you also guarantee that that farmer or that local stores products will always taste better. It also instills a sense of community and value knowing that you are helping those around you. When you buy local everything tends to come full circle. As the article states the best way to buy better food is to grow it yourself. This is not always an option for those renting a home or living in an apartment but I know that in the Ann Arbor area you can rent plots of land in large gardens where you can grow whatever you want. It’s also very easy to grow chilies, tomatoes, and other vine plants in 5-gallon buckets on your front or back porch.

This article gave me a lot of other options to not only feed myself well but to also help my community. Living in Ann Arbor has exposed me to a lot of great ways to not only live green but eat green as well. As I was reading this article all I could think of was how Ann Arbor is pretty much the epitome of this concept.

Response 1 re-posted

Lauren Korany

Derrick Jensen addresses the idea of hope in his article “Beyond Hope” in a negative manner. He claims, “Hope is what keeps us chained to the system...” For Jensen, hope is an inactive word; incapable of pushing the individual to protect the world they live in. The world is rapidly deteriorating. Jensen expresses frustration due to the passive behavior of today’s population.

He presses for optimism in the individual. To obtain that optimistic attitude, you must “die”. What he means by this is to shed hope. Essentially hope embraces a third person stance, a word spoken from someone who has backed away from the problem, someone relying on an external source to clean it up. Once the individual stops relying and putting faith into a higher authority, they must depend on themselves. They begin to fend for themselves; a necessary quality in the advance for change. Independence becomes the active push towards making progress.

As Jensen had explained, hope is bad because it inhibits us form taking a stance on important issues. This concept opened my eyes because I tend to be passive, especially with environmental issues. I find it hard to know where to begin to make a difference, but one way is to show it in my artwork. In ADP III, we discussed that the ability to send messages to a viewer through art is a powerful quality. It can affect many people. The graphs and charts used in lecture proved points that I was unaware of. The more I saw the statistics, the more I wanted to act. I believe that is an important response not only for the artist, but for the viewer as well. It causes them to want to become active in solving these issues.

response 2 with picture

In determining how much I need the natural world several things quickly came to mind: sunlight, fresh air, flowers, and water. I then contemplated how these various pieces of nature formed my own definition of necessities in the natural world. I came to the conclusion that many of my personal “natural world needs” may be considered somewhat selfish. While water and air are essential to live, sunlight and flowers are things in nature that I feel a personal connection to. After moving from Miami to Ann Arbor, I quickly realized how much I loved sunlight and how accustomed I had become to green grass and colorful flowers in bloom year round. Even my initial thought of water was not intended in a traditional way, but rather, I pictured an ocean or a large body of clear blue water. Not surprisingly, my needs in nature are almost direct opposites of the things that I do not feel a need for. For example, I don’t need cold weather, snow, or leafless brown trees. Based on my reflections it is pretty apparent that my needs are based on personal preferences primarily stemming from my childhood.

Meat (#3)

By: Ling Jie Gu

Throughout the passage the author mentions the life of a cow that is being processed in a cattle farm to be eaten as meat. This states that animals should somewhat be treated with respect and dignity, for what they go through.

 

However, the issue becomes more vague when animal rights activists argue that animals should not be eaten. In reality, they trod upon dead animals and organisms every minute of their waking life. They seem to stand for the rights of all animals, yet they sometimes loom over the wood in their house, which comes form dead trees and which took some real slaying of an animal’s natural habitat in order to be there. They say they stand up for the rights of animals, yet they don’t understand that somehow they tread upon animals themselves.

 

Some argue that animals should not be subjected to pain and suffering when they die, especially when they help human beings. That may have a good cause to think about, since we do no harm to our allies. Animals are always our allies if we think about it. They never try to harm humans purposefully. However, one may argue that intelligence plays a big role on deciding whether an animal should be treated more ethically or not so. For instance, people are more concerned about the need of dolphins slaughtered on the coasts of Japan rather than the hundreds of millions of flies which are being swatted. That I can comprehend. The piece merely states the troubled life of a cow which has to go through a very processed, almost scant life. Do the animals really care? Are people the ones who feel that the animals are suffering? I understand the face that animals definitely have feelings for us and that they are their own beings. I think that animals, if relevant to your life, should be saved… If not, what about the starving kids in Africa? What about other causes? I guess animals rights is an interesting issue. 

Nature (#2)

By: Ling Jie Gu
Nature to me is an inspiration for much of my work. Out relationship to nature is very much a relationship of codependence. Nature is the study of the natural world. The world around us constitutes our environment. In nature, the relevance it has on us varies between people. Biologically, nature is very much a provider that shields us from the heat of the outer world (space, for example). Though, one may argue that space is a realm of nature in itself. However, We tend to pollute our environment much more so than other species… It is still a mystery as to how we manage to sustain ourselves using the Earth’s vast resources since they are all going on the verge of being wiped out.

The fisheries in the world’s oceans. Most of them are about to collapse. It’s funny when some people say that nature doesn’t affect us all that much. For future generations, nature is everything they have. Nature is what we live in and what we breathe and what we chemically are built up of. Nature is everything. We are nature too. We has human beings don’t quite understand what exactly it means. Building sustainable energy plants and doing sustainable farming means looking after the place that we grew up in.

False Hope (#1)

By: Ling Jie Gu

Is there such thing as false hope? Hope is an element people on earth never fail to speak about, since they rely on their “hopes” in order to technically “get by” in the world. The theory of false hope may be provocative.

Regarding the environment and environmental issues, hope is a vast powerhouse that keeps the spirit of environmentalists alive. It needs to be pumped to the minds of the people so that they can retaliate and gain momentum to the issues at their hands.

Jensen mentioned: “no matter what environmentalists do, our best efforts are insufficient. We’re losing badly, on every front. Those in power are hell-bent on destroying the planet, and most people don’t care.”

The hope that Jensen mentions to the reader is merely an illusion to the reader. What he refers to as hope seems like a trick used by environmentalists to cloud the perceptions of others who seek such. He mentions that people seems disillusioned about their perceptions on the issues. For instance, his sarcastic mention of Jesus Christ coming to save us all implies that others may be too bent on this disillusionment.

Is there really a false hope? In the end, hope may just be a figment of people’s imaginations, or rather, the excitement that comes with seeing a clear path to success. 

Response #3

I do think that Leopold’s statement is still somewhat relevant today because the majority of people still assume that food comes from the grocery and do not consider where and how those foods were prepared. In the article of “The Steer’s Life,” Pollan went in depth of how cows were prepared and the steps in which they went through to end up in a neatly packaged container in the grocery shop. I do not think that he is literally talking about owning a farm and leading an agricultural life. Instead, I think that he is stressing the importance of conserving nature and to truly respect and love it for the many resources that the land has given us, according to his concept that “when we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is not other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man” (Leopold, viii). Also, I think Leopold was thinking about the relationship to ones self and to the “Global Systems,” in which if there were more people living an agricultural lifestyle, more people would know where and how their food is produced as well as where their heat will come from. There are ways of interpreting Leopold’s assertion that two spiritual dangers are that breakfast comes from the grocery, and heat comes from the furnace for the 21st century. For instance, Professor Trumpey talked about the artificial insemination of chickens by the demand of people to having bigger breasted chickens is one of the spiritual dangers that breakfast comes from the grocery. People have no idea how these chickens are raised or what kinds of antibiotics, and etc. were pumped into them; what we are actually consuming when eating these big breasted chickens. I think what he means by “spiritual danger” is being vaguely aware of the dangers that we assume are not there. I do relate to this statement because before this class and the main goals that Professor Trumpey mentioned in lectures, I was not really aware how my actions, whether buying meat, or eating fish, really fit into the relationship between me and the “Global System.” Before this class, I was not fully aware how fish farming, meat production, or etc. affected the environment as well.

World Changing Post #2: Leapfrogging

World Changing Response #2

Alyssa Olson

Leapfrogging

I chose to read about the idea of “leapfrogging”. This idea is very popular in developing countries such as Kenya and other parts of Africa. For a very long time those in the West have tried to help those in poverty-stricken areas or those in developing countries by trying to have them adopt the ways of the West. Although this usually is of some help to these countries, it never really addresses the core issues or allows them any room to develop any further.

Until recently many of the same forms of aid were being used until designers finally realized that these societies are drastically different than our own and maybe that was the fundamental design flaw. Just because it works in the West does not mean it will work everywhere else. These other countries have not only different climates, societies, needs, and languages, but different lives in general. Once people began realizing this the idea of “leapfrogging” was born. Instead of giving these developing nations outdated technology, why not give them the newest technology and save them some money in the long run.

The book used the example of cell phones in Africa. With the introduction of personal cell phones and phone booths in different villages it has allowed these nations to not only build their commerce and trade but also their social standings and it has greatly boosted their employment rates and national income. As we all know having a cell phone makes life a lot less complicated and now that many people of Africa have one it has allowed for the beginning of some development. It has allowed businesses and trades people to gain more work because they can now be reached by phone instead of by word of mouth.

I was extremely inspired by this piece because it focuses on something that majority of our society takes for granted. I never go deep into thought about the importance of my cell phone or how the introduction of cell phones into the U.S. has made not only business means easier but even daily life. The ability to contact and be contacted within a few seconds allows all aspects of our society to become less complicated. Even though not all forms of technology thrive in developing countries, the introduction of cell phones has been nothing but a blessing. I definitely feel more aware not only of global situations but also of how something so many of us take for granted can be a pivotal point within another society.

Response_3

Lauren Korany

In A Sand County Almanac, Leopold states, “there are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery and the other that heat comes from the furnace” (Leopold 6). Even though this was written in 1949, I believe it still remains largely relevant today and can be adapted to how we live in the 21^st century. At the time, he may have suggested owning a farm and maintaining it, producing a greater understanding of how the system works. But as we’ve seen in Michael Pollan’s “This Steer’s life”, other measures can be taken to end our ignorance as consumers. We can witness how they process of creating meat, harvesting food, or obtaining fuel is done. It does not require owning our own farms because frankly, there isn’t the necessity for everyone to tend to the same kind of work.

When Leopold refers to the term “spiritual” in his statement, it seems that he believes that there is an underlying consciousness to how we perceive series of events. In the chapter “Good Oak” (Leopold 6-18), Leopold delves into the vast life of an oak tree. He explores the dates of each ring and how the tree related to the environment during that time period. This reflects that being ignorant has no capacity for understanding and emotion. If you can see and better understand where things come from and their lives, you can pick up emotion on it. When the word spiritual is used, it is referring to our own judgment and our emotions tied to the process.

This is important in relation to the global system in which we live. As consumers, our relation to the system is to obtain our produce through mediums, such as the grocery or the wood store. Gradually, the need to know the way our produce is obtained becomes less and less concerning for us as individuals. Yet, if many of us understood where our produce came from and the way it was produced, we would have largely different perspectives on how we’ve been consuming these items both in quantity and quality. Our spiritual understanding of how we fit into the global system would be heightened.