This really does feel like a moment to root into one’s community and ask, “What if everything I need is already here?” Sheltering In Place inspires that sort of assessment, since every whim can’t be appropriately met with a car drive, plane ride, or BART trip to somewhere else. We’re all part of multiple overlapping and discrete communities, of course. And I’m finding myself in touch with a wider group of people from various points in my life, just because many folks have more time than usual and it feels natural to reach out and check in. Online, by phone, over Zoom. For a lot of us, our physical contact with others is contracting while our virtual contact with others is expanding.
The question of the immediate community and its sufficiency is interesting for me personally. We’ve lived in the East Bay for a dozen years now, and I’ve met a lot of people here, but I’ve really made only one new East Bay friend since the move—i.e., many acquaintances, just one friend friend. We’ve also felt somewhat culturally alien in our current immediate neighborhood, and I would feel more at home, more surrounded by trusted, good friends and kindred spirits on our old block in San Francisco than I do here. Even after all these years. Also, I have some children living in far-away places, so I have to factor that in as well.
I acknowledge that some people are living so close to the edge financially, practically, socially that this situation can’t allow them time for reflection or assessment but can only be a source of anxiety and fret. My point here is to consider the situation of those of us that have at least minimal margins during Sheltering In Place. To that end, let’s say this: For some of us, this is a good time to look at how much more, or to what degree, one can find what one needs in one’s immediate community.
Some thoughts:
*A few years ago, I read a preprint of a study done by UC Berkeley’s Open Source Food. Researchers collected wild greens from three different East Bay cities, focusing on disadvantaged, high-traffic areas. They tested the veggies for their nutritional offerings, as well as their toxicity levels, and found that, after rinsing, and based on standard servings, toxicity levels were within EPA safe guidelines. Researchers looked at toxicity levels in both the soil and the leaves themselves. (Cadmium was the one heavy metal with high-ish concentrations in some plants; please consult the preprint, linked above, if you want the deets.) Nutritionally, the wild greens tended to have higher nutrient densities than their most nutritious farmed counterparts.
I remember feeling really psyched when I first read this—abundant, available, nutritious food that grows without inputs of fertilizer or water. Wowza. Plus: Free. However, East Bay municipal ordinances and East Bay Regional Park District rules prohibit taking any plant materials from public spaces. So this raises questions. If municipalities decided to allow foraging on public lands, how could that be organized to prevent over-foraging and damage to the environment? Maybe we need more open space to allow for nutritious foraging by the citizenry?
To circle back to the original point of this post, this may be a very basic way for us to be getting some of what we need right where we are. For now, because of all those pesky ordinances and rules, we’re not supposed to go hunting chickweed in our favorite parks. But if you have a yard—and I recognize that many urban dwellers do not—you may have some of these nutrient-dense visitors popping up without even knowing it. To support food security during this pandemic, Open Food Source has made its publication, Bay Area Baker’s Dozen Wild Edibles, available online. The organization stresses that the low-res quality of the online version doesn’t allow for definitive plant ID; they point out that many edible weeds have toxic look-alikes. So you’ll want to cross-reference with other sources and make absolutely sure you’re eating something edible before you toss those green leafies you foraged into your potage or porridge.
Foraging as a way to get what you need from where you are raises another question: What if everybody starts doing it? Yikes!! Will there be a green plant anywhere in sight? When Sam Thayer, a well-respected name in the world of foraging, guested on my all-time favorite podcast, Rewild Yourself, one of the questions that came up was whether seven billion people can actually go a-foraging without destroying the world as we know it. Thayer had a number of things to say on the topic. One of things he said: We’ve never tried it so we can’t really know. But we could certainly set things up to make it more possible and more viable, as well as environmentally sustainable. Thayer is a proponent of Ecoculture, a practice borrowed from Native Americans which involves active management of the wild world to increase its health and its production of edibles and other valuable plants.
*About a week ago, I read an article in the New York Times called “America Stress-Bought All The Baby Chickens.” Hatcheries with national reach have sold out of chicks weeks in advance; local feed stores can’t keep up with demand. Apparently, chick sales rise during trying economic times, such as stock market downturns. Our current perfect storm--with people spending more time at home, having less income, and possibly finding it hard to buy eggs at the local market-- means many have decided to get their very own egg source.
The article focuses on concerns about people’s willingness and ability to properly care for their chickens after school, work, and their attendant commutes start up in earnest again.
I appreciate those concerns, but I also think many people, with a little more time available than usual, have permission to feel a longing to move closer to the source of things. I’m a big proponent currently of planting Corona Victory Gardens, however modest or minimalist. I see these kinds of activities—close contact with plants and animals, with the source of our food—as healthy and hygienic in a mental as well as physical sense. And I think it’s possible, when the machine’s parts start grinding again, for many people to negotiate, for example, one day a week of work from home. Losing that one day’s commute would open up plenty of time to muck out the coop and repair any holes in the wire covering the chicken run.
If these efforts could become more community based, say, with neighbors on a private road deciding to line that road with fruit and nut trees, creating a shared neighborhood orchard—well, that would be grand. I’m thinking out loud here, because my relationships with my current neighbors don’t make projects like this very likely. But a girl’s gotta dream.
*When you look at a map of where confirmed coronavirus cases are in the United States, they’re clustered in densely populated centers. Of course. More people means more hosts for the virus; more density means more likelihood of transmission.
Which raises some questions about all the places in the U.S. that aren’t densely populated. I remember certain conversations in the 1970s about a Brain Drain from more rural areas to cities, a trend that had been underway since the end of World War II. The idea was that a lot of local-grown talent and smarts were leaving small towns and rural areas for the glitter and glow of the big city.
To continue this theme of finding what you need locally, it does seem that homegrown talent that remains in small towns or nonurban areas might mean that rural places could generate their own entertainment instead of waiting for Tame Impala to play a nearby arena on their latest tour; homegrown idea generation might provide solutions to local problems without the input of academics or policy makers who don’t really know a particular place, but have ideas anyway about how to “fix” things.
I came across a couple of things this week that seemed to fit the current zeitgeist. I was reminded of the Statler Brothers’ amazing single, “Flowers On The Wall,” because of a piece in a cool new publication called New Mown Hay (which I will link to when I understand what to link to). I was especially thrilled to learn that I remembered all the words (except for the excellent second verse) to “Flowers On The Wall,” which I last heard probably 28,000 years ago. What amazing treasures are archived in the vaults of our minds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyyTPsSTM7U
And here’s Natasha Lynne Vodges’s poem “Snowbound:”
There is time to stop traveling…
to get off other people’s subways
to halt airplanes from landing in your life.
A time to refuel yourself.
A time to be snowbound
within your own private space
where the only number you dial
is your own.