Institutionalized

Over the summer, I mooched a book about adult learners, specifically, how adults learn musical instruments, and how it differs from how children learn them. The author, John Holt, is an expert in learning himself, and has done much work on different learning styles, and how many children are failing, not because of themselves, but because the system fails them.

As a leading thinker, he has had the opportunity to meld minds with others in his field, and a South American colleague put his finger squarely on our tendency to create institutions. At some point, nearly every field where we used to "do it ourselves" has become institutionalized: we are being raised to believe that this is good, while a few questioning souls poke around the ragged edges and point out that the scale in the economy of scale is not a human scale.

Holt's point was that learning institutions often fail people who don't fit in the mold, and especially adults, who know themselves well enough to know how they learn. But what he says also applies to other institutions: Health care, from childbirth to medications, with the establishment trying to loosen the grip of centuries of wisdom. And then there's the food industry, for an industry is yet another institution.

Along the narrow lanes of Ireland and even the more civilized Britain, we often see signs of small food producers--literally. Hand-made cardboard signs for free-range eggs, more elaborate wood-burned signs for farm stands, even a hand lettered sign in a window advertising homemade ginger-rhubarb jam. Some farm stands even have meats and cheeses, and occasional sundries like flour and honey.

That window sign for jam makes me think of the hundreds of jars of jam on my shelves at home, how I throw fruit from our plum tree away every year. I could easily make up another hundred jars every year, but there is no way we would be able to eat it, and because mine is not a commercial kitchen, I cannot legally sell it. I ran into much the same thing when I made the wedding cake for friends. I toyed with setting up a limited shop, making the occasional special cake as it fit in my life, but an investigation of the regulations revealed that there is no place for the very small producer.

The irony, of course, is that this affects things that we proclaim as Good, such as the organic standard and reducing waste and even (what some would call Christian) charity. Since the institutions we have allowed to become gigantic place the onus on even small producers to conform to regulations that really only apply to large producers, we all miss out: the person with a few grass-fed cattle who cannot slaughter them because he would need to provide two washrooms for FDA inspectors in his facility; the home baker who makes just few heavenly rhubarb pies and jam; the ambitious gardener whose bumper crop of zucchini and tomatoes end up in the garbage because even the food bank isn't allowed to accept it.

This institution-driven culture of fear is not a new idea, but we have finally given it a name. Strip searches for airline travel are only the latest manifestation, as we have allowed so many institutions to grow beyond their intended purpose. The argument for the institution in the food industry is nearly always safety: to keep our food supply safe, we must hold every producer, large and small to the same standard. But we are seeing exactly the opposite: as we push toward more and more food-as-a-commodity and factory production, our food supply has never before been so fragile. These self-same centralized practices contribute to equally large-scale outbreaks of pathogens that didn't even exist a generation ago. But the small, human, scale makes sense: if you know who grew you food, and they know you (or you are one and the same), it becomes obvious that it is in everyone's interest to bring safe food to the table.

The other argument is that at no time in our history have we been able to provide so many calories to so many people for so little money. And yet this claim is undermined by the revelation that not only are a great many of these calories empty ones that contribute to a huge health crisis, but these same savings are realized through unbalanced subsidies lobbied in back rooms by two large institutions, government and industry.

It is not a mortal error to entrust an institution with a task we do not feel up to: but the institution we are free to choose must be worthy of our trust, and we must understand just what part of us we are abdicating to that body.

Mileage

My “new” car (ok, it’s used) has a nifty little trip computer that tells me how many more miles I have on the tank, as well as calculating the mileage for that tank. Yesterday afternoon, a few miles from our friend’s alpaca farm (the same one where we saw a cria being born last summer), we stopped for petrol, and I checked the trip computer: 31.5 mpg.

Of course, that doesn’t tell the whole story. A quick check of the map reveals that we traveled about 300 miles yesterday, yet we drove for only about four hours and used only one tank of gas. No, we weren’t incredibly fast, and the car doesn’t have an unusually large tank: nope, we took the ferry.

Our choice was based on several factors: flying is a hassle and produces a lot of carbon, and we’ve done so much this year (and have more to come) that we really wanted to avoid flying; the airfares for half-term break were obscenely inflated, even for discount airlines; and we very shallowly wanted to have our own car because a) it felt stupid to rent one when we had just bought two cars and b) we wanted to go to IKEA in the UK for a few items. This left us with the ferries.

Based on the distances, the Rosslare to Wales ferry looked to be the shortest route, and broke up the driving. High speed ferries are mothballed for the rough seas of fall and winter, so we opted for the big slow one. We booked it online, and yesterday, at the crack of dawn, set out for our sailing. As we waited to board, the sun rose over the Irish Sea.

To say the ferry is big is an understatement. With ten decks, half of them for vehicles, the thing was immense. There were a few families in minivans like us—we figure most got out of town Friday evening—but the main event was the trucks. Passenger cars were boarded in fifteen minutes, but the trucks kept coming aboard for over an hour.

And as we disembarked, a truck wove in front of us in slow motion: Polish registration, coming from Ireland, with “Täglich frisch!” (“Fresh daily!”) emblazoned on the side. Pictures of happy, crisp vegetables completed the illusion.

And that got me thinking. Now, we arrived in the UK just after noon. We had three more hours of driving ahead of us to make it to our destination this side of London: that truck however, would be on the road until bedtime just to make a ferry across the channel, with driving through the wee hours just to get to a German-speaking border. The south of Germany, Switzerland or Austria would easily add another 400 miles to the vegetable’s trip.

We were only a bit tired when we arrived, but we had had the chance to stretch our legs, eat two full meals and breathe fresh sea air on our trip: those carrots and leeks had no such opportunity. So, while we’re feeling fairly smart for having chosen the more pleasant journey, we have found our resolve to eat locally reinforced by a ferry trip.

On the final leg of our journey, just after the petrol station, was an organic farm stand. Fresh vegetables, fresh daily. No gallons or tons or miles involved.

Plain brown wrapper

It has been blustery since yesterday, great gusts that sneak in unsealed windows and blow open the hatch to the attic. And yet the towering oaks and chestnuts around us remain largely intact, and only a few leaves have made drifts of gold and brown by the side of the road. Trees here grow in thick stands, and the people of the land know that these stands both provide shelter and protect the soil.

The way of life here is different, some would say backwards. There's plenty of business opportunity, but I doubt people would avail themselves of it. If you need something, you need to let someone know: they'll chat with someone else (I swear Main Street looks like something from a Hollywood musical, with people stopping and chatting every 20 feet), and before you know it, someone will hear about something that just may be what you were looking for. Imagine a place where people identify their needs and then seek it out, instead of the marketing machine telling them what they want.

Our hilltop neighbor told us of the tale of finding their extraordinary home. Scouring listings in the paper and on the Internet, despairing of finding something beautiful where they could raise their family, they told their tale of woe to another school parent. On her way home, the classmate's mother noticed that someone was moving out. She stopped her car (yes, in the middle of the road), and asked the fellow what was happening to the house (yes, it is acceptable for total strangers to ask such questions) and learned that he was planning to rent it, but what with this and that, hadn't got around to it. Well, she says, let me put you in touch with this nice family that's looking for just such a place.

For the average American, coming around a sharp turn on a one-and-a-half lane road to find a car blocking it and folks chatting would be cause for becoming angry, rolling down the window and yelling at people in a not terribly civilized fashion to move their ____. But this is the way this country works, and most (not all, sigh) folks realize that it could well be an exchange like the one that found or will find them their job, their car, their house or even the love of their life. Or butter.

When we drop off Little One at his rural school, there are always a few parking lot conversations. The first few days, when Darling Husband was with, he bonded with the men folk, comparing things like cell phone reception (discovered the two places with the best reception at school), the best ways to get from here to there (learned of an excellent route over the hills and picked up an occasional rider); I concentrated on the domestic: where might I find good vegetables, butter, meat, maybe even some yarn. I learned that our little town has a health food store, which just happens to be run by another parent at the school, and that she's happy to order any product your heart desires (case of soy milk, please!); that there's an organic farm stand south of school (yup, another parent); that there's a pink building up north of Eadestown where there's a nice couple that sell yarn; that that there's another organic farm stand with meats (not another parent, but one parent knew of it); and that if I waited around at pickup time for the dairy farmer's wife, I might be able to score some fresh butter.

And here it is in my hands, heavy, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. A parking lot chat, transformed into a block of real, fresh, very local butter (from 15 minutes away).

It is an unspoken contract between neighbors that the trees will not be cut or damaged, say to unblock a view or such frivolity. We, as the trees, rely on each other to withstand the strong winds.

In the bag

When I first followed my heart to Germany, all these many years ago, I encountered my future husband's first scorn when I went shopping for the first time. No, I had not bought the wrong cheese or overspent my budget. Nope, I had said, "Ja" when offered a bag. He explained that that plastic bag had set me back 20 Pfennig (less than 10 cents at the time). In response to my dumbfounded look, he explained that plastic bags were expensive to manufacture and polluted terribly, and they were only for thoughtless people who had forgotten to bring their own bags like everyone should.

I was quickly indoctrinated, and had problems when I returned to the states three years later, and showed up at the supermarket with my cheerful wicker basket. Cashiers gathered around to admire this oddity, even stranger than the Birkenstock crowd's ugly canvas or burlap sacks.

While I was in Germany this summer, I read online that the city of Seattle recently introduced a 20-cent tax on plastic grocery bags. Uproar ensued, people resent being told what to do, it's a nanny state, I have a right to a plastic bag, they scream.

The irony is not lost on me: for I had brought shopping bags with me to Europe. They are everywhere in my life: in the trunk of my car, by the front door, and yes, in my suitcase when I venture away from home. Here in Ireland, I actually had to buy garbage bags, as I have yet to receive a single plastic bag during my many shopping excursions.

Here, bringing your own bags is the norm. This past weekend, a man was at the checkout stand next to us at the supermarket. The clerk was not alone in clucking as she sold him four plastic bags. It is the first time I have seen anyone buy bags in the four weeks I have been here.

Darling Husband took out the garbage last night (in one of our purchased biodegradable bags), and came back in with his first dumpster treasure: a new sturdy shopping bag from Tesco Ireland. I shall add it to my collection of purple co-op bags from home.

Bambi

On the windy-twisty road to Little One's rural school this morning, there was a deer in the road. It was lying on the asphalt, struggling to get up, panicked brown eyes begging me to not run it over. I wasn't sure how badly it was hurt, but it was clearly suffering. The adult voice in me told me that I should put it out of its suffering, and if I'd been a true country woman with a gun rack in the back of my rental car, I suppose I could have done just that, and bagged dinner in the process.

If this were home, there wouldn't be a deer in the road, because they've all been run out or run over long since. But if, for the sake of argument, there was one, I would call animal control, because it's dangerous to take care of these things yourself: wild animals, disease, you don't know where it's been, etc. We are a nation of people abdicating our authority to institutions. Not so the Irish.

I think the Irish would simply laugh at me, and tell me to call someone to put it out of its misery, cut it up and put it in the freeze, how often does dinner just land on your plate? They would not recoil in horror at the thought of dealing with a wild animal. Indeed one of our new neighbors, a self-proclaimed semi-retired Doctor (who seems to paint and walk his dog around the lake more than work), asked if we'd like to help him work his way through some venison he received last fall; the new season is upon us, and he needs to make room in the freeze. Yup, the butcher's window on Main Street (honestly, it's called that) has a new hand-painted poster that proclaims that they now have fresh venison.

When I drove back, after promising Little One that I would find out about Animal Control, the deer was gone. A friend reports that some folks who knew what to do had moved it to the side of the road. Whether it then left of its own accord, or became someone's supper, I have no way of knowing.

Doorstep?

Upon our arrival, jetlaggy and tired, the relocation firm hired by Darling Husband's ushered us into a temporary "self-catering" apartment. To get us started, someone had brought in a "welcome pack," a selection of foods that would see us through until we could do a proper shop. The milk and cold cuts were wasted on us, though we did graze on the fruit and make good use of the butter. But can you blame us if the foreign-looking white loaf found another use? Perhaps I was still bleary-eyed from the overnight flight.

Just a chicken

Our quest for good food is ongoing, but we made a giant leap forward this weekend with the discovery of the farmer’s market in Naas. Small, but fine, fresh vegetables to be sure, but also bread piled high, meats, cheeses, the olive lady and even a few home bakers and a gourmet chocolate man. We did the first round, and then started buying: beets, avocado, onion bread, potatoes, strawberries, green onion, even back rashers and sausage. And then I stopped at the butcher’s cart.

I took a deep breathe, and launched into my well-rehearsed query on the kind of life the beasts, both great and small, live before they reach our table, in particular, whether they are fed antibiotics. We are learning that just as the Irish language has a tense that doesn’t correspond to anything we are familiar with, and the gift of Blarney extends to not really answering a question. The fellow couldn’t say for sure whether these particular beasts here had never had an infection or been treated. But, chimes in the neighbor fellow who is holding down his own stool, the chickens, they wouldna have any. Indeed, agrees the butcher, and launches into his own beef, the state of what the Americans do to their poor animals, puttin’ them on huge concrete pads in the desert and not even feeding them grass like we do our creatures. It’s no wonder they have to pump them full of medications. And hormones, well, now just don’t get him stared on that.

Sensing a lull, I nod, and tell him I’ll take a chicken. He bags it, places it on the counter, and tells me it is twelve Euro. A fair price.

As I dig in my wallet, the Stool Sitter asks me who I think will win the election, and that can of worms spilled onto the ground. More discussion and head-shaking. “Don’t the Americans care what the rest of the world thinks?” “I think that it’s not that Americans don’t care, it’s that they’re unaware that the rest of the world thinks differently.” “Ach, an insular attitude. Dangerous, that.”

And so on. The price of the chicken magically drops two Euro, the bill changes hands, and I finally make my escape. The chicken has already been roasted and curried, and the bones will make a healing soup for our common head colds. But I will be back to this market. The discussion will continue, and besides, I didn’t even get to the chocolate man yet.