Big Ideas for Curious Kids

It started with a book I randomly grabbed off the shelf in the local library: Deeply Rooted, by Lisa Hamilton.  The subtitle?  “Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness.”   I read a passage or two and was taken with the personal nature of the stories and took it home.  Having grown up in a small Illinois town surrounded on all sides by cornfields, farming was in my blood… literally.    My Dad had grown up in a REAL farm town.  All of his brothers, and most of their sons, ended up farming.

I have some Schmave stories about the “city kid”s (Woodstock, population 10,000) annual pilgrimage to drive tractors, feed hogs and drink lots of iced tea.  But given the miniscule amount of time I actually spent there, my deeply felt connections to this tiny town were always a mystery, Lisa’s book — about the spirited group of farmers who are rebelling against the huge Agribusiness culture — took these feelings to another level.

Then I was invited to a house party focused on local organic farms and the burgeoning “buy local” movement.  There, I arranged to interview a few of the local farmers.

The story is slowly taking form…. a story with tentacles running into scores of topics our children will have to grapple with in the years to come:  About the food we eat… About stewardship of the land… About the grueling process of turning away from ‘big is better…” About what farming used to be; what it has become; and where it might be going.  Most importantly, who are the people who grow our food and what are their stories?
David Strohm

Photo by Lisa Hamilton

I was driving from A-B after somewhat of a challenging day.  Rather than turn on the radio in my friend’s car, I pushed in the cassette tape.  A wonderful voice with a bit of a British flavor, started up mid-sentence, speaking of characters and places that were foreign to me.  The prose was dense… a hair’s breath away from being stilted… probably written in a very different time — for ears that were more patient.   But there was an elegance that knocked me up alongside the head.  For the next 30 minutes I bathed in that warmth of verbiage… words like “ploddingly”  and “crestfallen” and “perused”.    My ear does not discriminate against one syllable words.  The word “crouch” does so much in 6 letters.

Again,  these were nothing more than words.  I had come into the theater in the 3^rd act of a very complex play.  But for some reason, this lack of continuity didn’t bother me a bit.  Rather, it brought home the simple beauty of graceful words which — all on their lonesome – can deliver a Midwestern boy across the ravages of a rain-swollen creek .

Of course the spoken word has no monopoly on feel-good sensations.  Simple beauty shows up in an abandoned farmhouse…  a hawk studying a field from it’s perch on a fencepost… daisies and rocks retrieved from the trouser pockets of a 7-year-old… a song,  an old typewriter, a sun-dress…  a 1955 Chevy pick-up.

Simple beauty surrounds us.

If we can only push away from the screens.   David Strohm

I imagine some folks were born with a perfectly tuned engine.  And they perform the regular “service work” to make sure it stays that way.  I suppose that “service work” would be regular termite inspection, annual medical check-ups, 3,000 mile oil changes, and the perfect dietary blend of greens and yellows. ( In lieu of recent personal experience regarding such things, I’m guessing…)

There are others — out of self defense, lets call them artists — who hang onto the fragile tether by the seat of their collective pants, while they focus on works of great purpose. That these WOGP are usually cultivated from a shadow of a whisper adds drama if nothing else.

In a winter of life that has seen storm after storm after storm after storm, these “others” awake one morning, poke their heads up, and struggle to their feet.  They have survived.  They smile faintly at the wonder of it all, grab a cup of tea, and begin the again.

In Episode 47’s Big Idea, we explore Howard Gardner’s proposition of “Multiple Intelligences.”  His theory — explored in part earlier by other scientists — breaks down intelligence into 7 categories.  He suggests each of us has a unique blend of these capacities and that the real challenge is learning where our strengths lie, then going with the flow.

Or as Orril Fluharty used to say:  “You put all your eggs in one basket, then watch the basket.”    More on Orril later.  — David Strohm

always seem to arrive awkwardly. And this one was no different. I picked up 13-year-old Natalie from school on Friday afternoon: The end of a week that saw catastrophic events in Haiti… and which opened up a 3 day weekend in which many local families head to nearby slopes.

Aware of this juxtaposition, Nat and I took a walk through the redwoods, talked about the pain and desperation that seemed so far away, and the monumental need for urgent response. As a source of inspiration, I told how her sister Hayley, working her way through college, had kicked in $20 to my donation. When I asked if she could really afford that much, she said she could make at the local restaurant in 2 hours , what took Haitians a week to earn.  Natalie and I brainstormed how she might organize her friends to collect donations for the relief effort.  She was leaning towards contacting school teachers next Tuesday and tying donations to some sort of fun event.  Her Dad was leaning towards contacting her friends as soon as she got home to begin an independent effort.
We had several more discussions back at the house:  About the need for breaking out of the old mold and taking the lead with her friends… setting a target for individual donations ($5-10) and overall collection ($1,000).  Before she went downstairs “to read”, she asked if she could go to a movie Saturday with her friend.

Her Dad was left upstairs… frustrated… wracking his brain how to best communicate an urgency that cannot wait for a 3-day “ski-weekend.”  Wondering if he had failed – amidst all the mentoring about kindness, and basketball, and responsibility, and leadership – to create a place where her heart can take over command.

An hour later, Nat checked back in. Via texting, emails and Facebook she had contacted close friends at 3 schools.  She had asked them to contact their friends for a joint effort.  She had contacted several teachers at her school requesting a mention on the daily address system.  She had already received 4 commitments and texts this Friday night were flooding her phone at a furious pace — not about a dance or an overnight or a boy… but about kicking in $10 of hard earned babysitting money for people light years away.

I noticed the satisfaction in Natalie’s voice and eyes.  And as would Wind in the Willow’s Ratty, or Moley or Badger, I retired to bed with a certain sense of comfort and hope.  David Strohm

Seven-year-old Jonathan was shopping with his mother in Chicago over the holidays when he saw a homeless woman holding a sign asking for help.  Such an occurrence is hardly rare these days.  What happened next was.  After Jonathan remained upset, his mother didn’t treat him like he had seen an R-rated movie.  She was grateful he had such a large caring space in his heart.  After brainstorming with his family how he might help, Jonathan wrote a simple a letter and passed it around his neighborhood in Orland Park, Illinois. In about a week, 4 truckloads of food and toys was collected and sent to Su Casa Catholic Worker Homeless Shelter in Chicago.

One seven-year-old boy.

In the video here http://www.nbcchicago.com/station/as-seen-on/Mother__Son_Explain_Impetus_for_Donation_Drive_Chicago.html

his mother says she doesn’t know why Jonathan did what he did.   I do.  So many times I have seen moms and dads grab their children’s hand as they pass by people living on the street… and pull them away.  What happened that day wasn’t special just because of Jonathan, but because he has a mother who knew how to root out the weeds of fear, and plant flowers in the rich soil of sadness.

David Strohm