September 01, 2005

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Local Food Challenge Wrap Up - Part I Our American culture is all about faster, quicker and having whatever we need doing, done. Although the warning signs are everywhere we don’t seem to heed them. We work more hours than Europeans; most of us don’t take our hard-earned vacation time every year; Americans are sleeping less than we did 100 years ago and as a result we are losing touch with our families, friends, our communities and ourselves. But there’s hope in the form of a book called, "In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed", by Canadian journalist Carl Honore. Honore says he wants to find a balance between fast and slow, not eliminate speed altogether. In Praise Of Slowness is the first comprehensive look at the worldwide Slow movements making their way into the mainstream -- in offices, factories, neighborhoods, kitchens, hospitals, concert halls, bedrooms, gyms, and schools. The book, now in its ninth printing, is striking a chord worldwide with its simple but far-reaching suggestions. The concepts are straightforward and the writing is easy, well researched and is a mix of reportage, intellectual inquiry tempered with a dose of humor. It will serve to improve people’s lives by showing them how others are re-establishing our relationship to speed and time. Chapters cover the familiar, including the Slow Food Movement. “A Slow dish can be quick and simple…Another way round the time crunch is to cook more than you need when you can and freeze the surplus.” Other explorations revolve...
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Recipe for Healing "New Orleans has become one of the cities of the mind, and is therefore immortal." --Cleanth Brooks, author It's been a while since I've written, mostly due to being overwhelmed by Katrina and a planned vacation to Banff (Canada). So today, in an effort to reconnect with myself, I went looking for hope. I promise, the next post will be worth the wait--I've been working on it for months! As mentioned many times before my interests in culture include food and also art. And what I know from personal experience is that art heals as it reveals. And given the number of creative souls that call this city home--the chefs, restaurateurs, musicians, vocalists, poets, writers, and painters--that have shaped New Orleans into a unique, distinct and as influential a city twice the size, reinvention is second nature. So after wading through a lot of articles that were disheartening I was encouraged by a Washington Post article saying that, "Folks are volunteering by the hundreds to conserve the city's art and architecture, several organizations report, reminiscent of the outpouring of volunteerism that followed the disastrous 1966 flood in Florence." {Note: Those waters receded in one day.} Another story of an artist in the New York Times, "surviving on water from a neighbor's pool," as "he spent his days making art from junk he picked up in the street and taking photographs of the destruction so that someday, he said, people will be able to experience Katrina through the eyes of an...

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