Sweet Reading Journal Five

The poem, Production by Audre Lord is a piece about harvesting honey. One of my favorite quotes I highlighted in the poem is ‘100,000 bees make a sturdy hive’. 100,000 is the maximum number of bees for a bee hive to accommodate. The more the number of bees, the more powerful is the hive. This quote presents the importance of teamwork for success. Another quote, ‘Tomorrow we make a living two dollars at a time’ depicts the idea that the nature provides income for human

The first line, ‘100,000 bees make a sturdy hive’ is powerful enough for me to think of bees with yellow and black strips with stinger at the back, producing high-frequency buzzing sound. This made my hairs to stand! While reading the lines of the poem after the first line, I imagined a sharp, shiny, hot knife used to uncap the bee wax; a light yellow honey comb with small, hexagon frames arranged in orderly manner with the dark, thick honey dripping from it; the brain alerting, extreme sweetness of the honey in mouth; the air filled with sweet smell of honey; the harvesters’ laughter while having honey feast. Most of the sensory details I experienced were pleasant.

The poet has used simile in the line, ‘Sweet creeps like bees’ to describe the fast flow of honey when it is extracted by the machine. In the same line, she has used another style, personification. She ‘humanizes’ the honey by telling that it ‘creeps’. Apart from that, the poet has presented the poem from first person’s point of view. The use of the word ‘we’ shows that the poet is one of the characters in the poem.

Reading this poem stimulated me to think of the nature’s vital role in providing nourishment and income for the human population. Honey is consumed by human. The harvesters sell honey to gain money, ‘two dollars at a time ‘. Now, I appreciate the Mother Nature more than before.

After reading the poem, I became curious to know the detailed process of harvesting honey. I was curious to know more about bees and honey as well. Therefore, I did some extra readings about bees. Now, I need to explore about honey harvesting process and honey!

Food Interview

Simon Ye was my subject of interview about food. He is an international student from China studying in Iowa State University. Therefore, I was curious to know his traditions practiced in his home town to cook and how he is coping with food in American environment.

China is a big country. Different regeions in China have different cooking traditions. Simon's hometown is in North part of China, a city near sea,called Wen Zhou. Seafood is easily available and popular there. There are a lot of ways to cook the seafood in Wen Zhou. One of them is boiling, the simplest way to cook. Boiling seafood without any other ingredients and eating them on the spot preserves the real taste and smell of the seafood. However, people with low preference for the smell of the seafood boil the seafood with garlic as garlic removes the 'bad' smell of the seafood.

Another easy way to cook seafood is stir-fry. According to Simon, 'Stir fried seafood is tastier than boiled seafood, but stir-frying causes the seafood to lose it's original taste'.

People in Wen Zhou prefer to eat cooked vegetable rather than raw vegetables. Normally, vegetables are stir-fried. The yellow rice wine added to make the vegetables tasty. As a final process of cooking vegetable, soy sauce is added. The people here add little salt in their cooking, especially vegetables.

During his stay in the US, Simon doesn't cook often, since he is having meal plan on campus. He misses his traditional Chinese food. Luckily, having restaurants that serve Chinese dishes makes the situation better for him even though the taste is not exactly as same as the traditional one that he used to cook.

Interviewing Simon made me realize that people miss the food they used to eat when it is not available. =)

Reading Journal Four

For the Reading Journal Four, I have chosen to respond to the profile of Marion Kalb, a co-director of National Farm to School Network.

While reading, one of the quotes I underlined is ‘school lunch is a perfect example of our dysfunctional food system…’. It is sad to know that school, a center of education and learning that should set a good example of food system, is having a bad image of food system. Another quote is ‘Nearly 30 million children eat school lunch five days a week in the United States’. Here I learnt that school has significant role in diet of children population, directly.

I admire Marion Kalb for appreciating food, the basic fuel of life. I admire her more for taking further step by spreading the sense of appreciation for food due to social awareness. She had helped villagers in central Africa through ‘market garden’ so that they can earn extra income. In another program called National Farm to School Network, she kills two birds in a stone by creating a direct link between farmers and school districts. This has helped the farmers to have a continuous, stable income and the school children to have nutritious diet. Marion has great contribution to the society for enhancing the quality of food system. I respect this woman

The obvious technique used by the writer to present her work is third person’s point of view. The whole profile of Marion Kalb is told by Costa by using the words like ‘Marion’, ‘she’ and ‘her’. Examples are ‘Marion Kalb has worked diligently for more than twenty-six years… ‘, ‘She kept her position as executive director for twelve years’ and ‘… Marion is trying to work herself out of a job.’

Besides that, Costa has presented the work in simple and direct language. One of the examples is ‘She pursued a degree in Political Economy at UC Berkeley, fascinated by how corrupt political arrangements tie people to lives of poverty‘. Here she points out the corrupted politics directly instead of shadowing the message in the sentence to present it indirectly. The usage of simple language throughout the profile is a great way of communicating the message with vast population of English literate people. An example of usage of simple language is ‘Farm to school has seen much success over the past thirteen years, synonymous with the growing interest and support of sustainable foods.’ This sentence is easy to understand.

The writer has also used criticizing tone in some parts of her work. I sense criticism in sentences such as ‘She pursued a degree in Political Economy at UC Berkeley, fascinated by how corrupt political arrangements tie people to lives of poverty‘ and ‘school lunch is a perfect example of our dysfunctional food system…’. In the first example, she has criticized the politics while in the second example she has criticized the food system in schools.

As a personal response to this profile, I would say that improving the food system of school when there are about 30 million children having lunch for five days in a week in the United States is among the best ideas to improve the food system of the future human population in the United States. Children tend to stick to the habit they have learnt at early age when they become adults. Therefore, eating nutritious food during school days helps the children to become adults with good eating habits. Apart from that, being exposed to the food production by visiting farms is a great way for the children to appreciate their food and to learn about food production. A good advocate of food system in school is the right knowledge for children to have a better life in future.

Reading Journal Three (Last Christmas of the War)

For the Reading Journal Three, I have chosen to respond to Last Christmas of the War by Primo Levi. The piece is about two prisoners, the writer and his friend, Alberto’s conspiracy to hide the food the former received from his sister and mother.

As I read the piece, I highlighted certain quotes. For an example, ‘the terms eating, food, hunger had meanings totally different from their usual ones.’ is one of them. The prisoners in the camp eat to satisfy hunger while ‘usually,’ people eat at social events even if they are not hungry to meet the social needs. The food the prisoners consume does not promise taste while ‘usually’ the food people consume is cooked to meet the desired taste. Another quote that I highlighted is, ‘Some other famished man was celebrating Christmas at our expense, maybe even blessing us.’ This sentence lessens the melancholy mood effect of the incident of the stolen jacket. Here, I am also impressed with Alberto’s ability for having a positive view from an unwanted incident. The quote at the end of the story, ‘this would be our last Christmas of war and imprisonment.’ has neutralized the effect on the whole mood of the story by giving hope that the suffering in the camp will end in about another one more year.

When I was reading this piece, my sense of smell and taste became active when the author described that ‘the package contained ersatz chocolate, cookies, and powdered milk’. I was imagining the smell and sweet taste of the chocolates and cookies. When the writer mentioned that he would get twenty-five whacks with a stick for not being able to stitch the registration number, my sense of hearing and touch stood out uncomfortably. I could ‘hear’ the sound of the whip from the air to the writer’s body and ‘feel’ the excruciating pain resulting from the whack!

One of the styles the writer had used to present the story is foreign language. ‘Mazel tov’ was used to congratulate the writer. Another example of this style is found in the supply master’s reply, ‘bekommst du fünfundzwanzig’ which means, the writer would receive twenty-five whacks with a stick. Besides that, the writer had used connotation to describe the hunger and desire for food when he mentioned the food package he had received from his family members.

Reading the story had made me to think about food wastage by those who can afford it. It is a disgrace when people throw away the leftovers while there are underprivileged people who cannot afford to eat the required amount of food to meet their basic needs, at another part of the world. I see the need to be grateful for the food we get and the easy access we have for the food. It is good to take and eat the required amount of food without wasting it.

At the end of Last Christmas of the War, my mind was in wonderment: How would the writer get a needle and thread? Did he able to find them on time? I hope he could sew the registration number on his new jacket so that he would not be whacked.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this story. It was easy to be understood in the first reading and it kept me interested as I was curious to know what would happen to the food at the end.