I've been foraging for raspberries in my local park over the past three weeks. They're sweet, but with higher acidity than store bought ones. And check out the color: beautiful, vivid ruby. Like jewels they glisten. To hold in the palm, they're airy and fluffy, yet so taut with juice in each tiny orb, that the attention to the outer surface beauty only matches the goodness within, once popped in the mouth.

I am fortunate. These natural snacks grow wild in my local park: Inwood Hill, the last remaining natural forest in Manhattan. It also contains the city's last salt marsh. Funny story: After telling a very envious friend of my wild raspberry foraging adventures, I brought him a quart, freshly picked from my morning's run. He gushed with gratitude, then asked if the berries were safe to eat. Mildly shocked, I responded yes, that I did wash them, as I assumed he would immediately snack on them. Naturally curious, and unable to shake the shock of such a question (a native New Yorker nevertheless!), I asked what he meant by "safe." He answered, "Well, I thought about pesticides. Could they be sprayed with pesticides?" I quickly retorted, "No. Only food that we *pay* for is sprayed with pesticides." Little chuckle. But often true.

Life has certainly taught me a few things in the past few months of my remiss blogging: Maintaining what one aims to accomplish through words alone is often not enough. Nevertheless, I saw graduation this May. It was lovely for my sister and father to visit me in NYC during the marker of MA completion. We ate like kings, drank like their guests and laughed and played a lá court jesters. Was much fun. I moved onto Art Directing a short film thereafter which, honestly, gave me such a rush. Truly deserves a spot as one of the top 10 items in which I've participated. Then I relaxed on Lake George for a bit of R & R. Note: Forget the wine in and around Lake George, in the Adirondacks. Even the praised restaurant at The Sagamore, Trillium bis, along with its highly visible promotion of "wine dinners," I found disappointing. But, a caveat: It was the best game in town, and for that, one can eat well and discover a word of wine and food togetherness utterly attainable anywhere else. Unless of course there's some culinary wunderkind with an outpost I didn't discover.

As promised, in what seems like eons ago, I've launched my extended BOOK:|:KITCHEN site which showcases all my tinkerings in the food and wine world and the overlapping areas of where other disciplines meet the two. I find the most telling stories though the connections of various interests, and sometimes find that "food" is not the real story; maybe it's ideals, ethos, authority, or dare I say power. But there is undoubtedly a narrative behind our consumptive choices. And it is the role we play, that I too play, that leads us to question and unpack a "recent past" that may or may not conflict with our hopeful, progressive amibitions for the future of food.

I will continue posting here for the next few months, but most of my activity you'll find at the definitive BOOK:|:KITCHEN. Please visit. And thanks for bearing with my absence over the months.  

                             _{Jonathan Nossiter
                           by Jean-Jacques Ader} 

The event will begin at 1 pm with Stories from the Frontline. The journalists on this panel have covered some of the biggest news events from all corners of the world. They will discuss the obstacles, heartbreaks and triumphs they have encountered — also examining the media's role in encouraging social responsibility. The panel will be moderated by Laurel Touby, founder of Mediabistro.com. Panelists include: 2005 Harry Chapin Media Awards winners Emily Hanford, an independent radio producer; Francine Orr, a photojournalist with the Los Angeles Times; P. Sainath, of The Hindu; and Tim Scheld, news director of WCBS News Radio.

The second panel discussion, beginning at 2:45 pm, is Growing Justice: Social Entrepreneurship. The panelists will discuss how their organizations are seizing opportunities others miss by improving systems, inventing new approaches and creating sustainable solutions to change their communities for the better. The panel will also examine social enterprise and the possibilities it holds as an emerging concept in the non-profit world. The panel will be moderated by Ian Marvy of Added Value. Panelists include 2005 Harry Chapin Self-Reliance Award winners Kathleen McKenna of Haley House, LaRhonda Ealey of Jubilee Homes and Bich Ha Pham of Hunger Action Network of New York State.

The final panel, India: Challenging Rural Poverty, will begin at 4:15 pm. Roughly 35 percent of India's population — more than 300 million people — are considered food-insecure, hungry or malnourished. The rural poor in India are marginalized by the global economy and oppressed by the upper class, landlords and corrupt government officials. At the grassroots level, the rural poor are fighting back with initiatives for education, economic justice and food security. Journalists, advocates and grassroots leaders will provide eyewitness accounts of rural poverty and social change in India. The panel will be moderated by Rhadhika Lal, of the United Nations Development Program. Panelists include Abraham George, pioneering humanitarian and author of HCMA finalist India Untouched: The Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty; and Sainath, who has been recognized for his reporting on farmers' suicides in India. Also invited are Yudhvir Singh, leader of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) Farmers Movement; and Smitu Kothari, a political advocate, educator and author.

I'll be attending this event, as I did last year, so expect commentary to follow.  Last year, a panel of small, articulate farmers faced a woman in the audience whose post-hippie, post-60s utopia received a pragmatic reality check on sustainability, both on the feeders end and the farmers themselves.  The next day, I saw her at The Integral Yoga Natural Foods Market on 13th Street in the Village.  I introduced myself, asked her a couple questions to check what she really believed, thinking she was just a provocateur (in the best sense), but turns out, she brushed off my questions, developing an air of entitlement? privelege? And proceeded with a simple muttering of something satisfactorily incoherent to which I checked my watch and moved onto other things that mattered.  Whatever it was, whatever her ultimate point and goal of accusing small farmers of not doing enough, plus her inexplicable wihtdrawal from my polite, yet curious questions, all provided some perspective on the "morality" and "cult of personality" around such food-related topics. And how often seemingly delicate one must traverse on terrain where there are landmines the 60s left behind.

Also, I'll be finishing my MA in The New School's Media Studies and Film department this semester, if you're interested in the program.   If anyone plans to attend the WHY event, let me know; we can meet up.

Growin' It: Food, Jobs and Justice. A free, all-day forum, Tuesday, October 17, 2006, 1- 5:30 pm.

 Register Now!

Another reason to appreciate Henry David Thoreau. 

From Scientific American: Eating Machine--"I call it an artificial living plant.  Like a botanical plant, the machine would have the ability to extract its own raw materials from the air, water and soil [see illustration]. It would obtain energy from the sunlight--probably by solar battery or steam engine.  It would use this energy to refine and purify the materials and to manufacture them into parts.  Then. like John Von Neumann's self-reproducing machine, it would assemble these parts to make a duplicate of itself.  It could then be harvested for a material it extracted or synthesized."--Edward F. Moore