Notecatcher

It's the busiest time of year, like always. School work is seasonal. We front load programs and systems during the first semester, and the second is just implementation and measuring.

Sometimes I wonder why we do all that we do at a school site. What if we just left everything as is for a couple of years instead? Didn't start any new programs, gave teachers the gift of time with their students (this is about trust, which is scarce these days), and let things emerge via their autonomy and creativity within classrooms?

When did education become so top-down and centralized? What is this in response to? Most of the time, I think we're doing it all wrong. No – I know we are. Sometimes I think about starting my own school. What would it contain, what would its programs look like, how would the people who work there feel, and what would the student experience be like? That could all happen under the nonprofit though. The Nonprofit – the name of my new Substack.

I also wonder what it would be like if I just stopped this work, which I love by the way, and things are currently really good. I've had worse years procuring funding as a contractor, or working at high-stress dysfunctional school sites. I think it's important to stop here and take notice that I'm thinking about what it would be like to walk away when everything is good.

That means my curiosity and desire for change is coming from a stable, healthy, happy place. It's not the product of despair. It's there in all of my quiet moments, lurking in my peace, hanging around to chat with me.

Last night I wondered to myself – What is the most stripped down version of work for you? Without all the baubles, meaningless facades, etc. What makes you feel good even without a financial reward? Cooking. Feeding people. Which I was doing at the time. And I thought of "The Chicken and Rice Man".

The relationship between Mr. Muñoz and many of the men he feeds is personal. “Uribe, you want more coffee?” he asked as he saw a familiar face. “Simon, do you want seconds on this pasta?”

In a way, Mr. Muñoz seems to need these men as much as they need him. His unofficial meal program gives meaning and focus to his life. He is as eager to help his motley clientele as they are to be helped.

“I know these people are waiting for me,” he said of the emotions that fuel his quixotic and perhaps obsessive crusade. “And I worry about them. You have to see their smile, man. That’s the way I get paid.”

I read this story shortly after graduating college in a "now what", and everything about it that stood out to me then still stands out to me. Except now I'm closer. The empathy, which I think our society struggles to define. The sharp and quick scenes in the kitchen with the ten Christs on the fridge and the sister stirring the boiling pot of lentils – "He got no life." The language! I grew up around people just like Jorge and his family, and code switch into our Rancho Market neighborhood lingo often to connect with students. This language is how I inhabit the past, my small tiny self unfettered by ego, obsessed with pouring gelatina in cups for the neighborhood market.

I don't want to leave my students, but sometimes I just want to feed them burritos and hot chocolate, and just be there for them while we all figure out what's next. Or I want to be on that empty patch of land, confronting the terror of nothingness, truly facing the responsibility to build something, to grow and cook up a new life. Maybe we can all do it together. All this thinking over some chicken and rice!!

I keep having recurring thoughts and reflections on the relationship between food and peace. I'm interested in this intersection. I think about my own relationship with food, how it's always been abundant in my life, yet the relationship has gone through periods of feast and famine. I struggled with an eating disorder in college, which I've largely locked out of my writing and lately I'm wondering why. But when I think it about this period of my life and the self-depravation, especially as someone who comes from a food growing and producing family where what we put on the table is so sacred and intertwined with every aspect of our existence (personal, commercial, cultural, spiritual), I wonder if it was about more than just self-image, body dysmorphia, adolescent depression, etc. Was it also about rejecting aspects of my upbringing, the all-knowing, all-consuming relationship my family has had with food...forever. Was it also fatigue and overwhelm? I don't know. If I'm having these thoughts, it must be all of these things. I'm curious to dig it up now. Maybe I'll do this during winter break through some kind of writing exercise about food memories. Maybe I'll have AI prompt me to write about this. Or better yet, a friend. That might be interesting. Beyond myself, I'm also interested in the topic of food and reconciliation, and this partly stems from being in my farm class. I've read a lot about "weaponized famine" and we're seeing it happen in real time in places like Gaza. The quiet enduring violence of carefully separating people from their earth, foodways, and food growing, sharing, and gathering practices. This is the invisible architecture of wellness in most of our lives, the glue of abundance that holds families and communities together. I once had a conversation with a public school colleague of mine about how homework was designed for children with kitchen tables and snacks. But what if a kid goes home to a one bedroom apartment with ten people and empty fridge? Do we understand the secret shame of this and the impact it has on kids? How it can seed resentment, jealousy, anger, and ultimately violence, directed inward or toward others? This kind of deprivation, this belly bankruptcy, is under our noses everyday. I think more about space. How are food and growing spaces, from land to surfaces, places of healing and reconciliation? bell hooks speaks to this a great deal in belonging: a culture of place and other writings. About how, during the Great Migration, Black folks were duped into this idea that self-actualization as a people was impossible on the land upon which slavery took place. How Black people were yet again systematically separated from their agrarian roots and a land they had grown to know and find spiritual power in as a free people, and how that separation affected their bodies, their ability to connect with one another and the divine, and uplift through the sharing of meals, how it decimated their feelings of belonging and efficacy, entrenched loneliness in the place of rivers, affecting life down to a cellular level. The point wasn't to make an argument against leaving; it was to fairly, honestly, quietly consider what has been lost. I discovered "Conflict Cuisine" and the work of Dr. Johanna Mendelson Forman who studies how food travels with refugees from conflict zones, how diasporas seek either consciously or subconsciously to recreate belonging through restaurants and shared meals. It reminded me of this beautiful story I first saw ten years ago on PBS Newshour about a Syrian refugee camp that developed its own economy. The story centers on a family that operated food businesses, and now supplies sweets and other baked goods for celebrations happening in the camp. I watched this story over and over again and showed it to my parents and we cried because it felt so personal and triumphant to us. It crystallized the connection between food and psychological survival. Sharing food feels like sharing the truest part of ourselves and the only way to experience joy, however finite. I recently saw a similar story of Palestinian people relocating to Mexico and rebuilding opportunities through food. Thinking about food and peace feels like going beyond the platitude of connection. Going further and asking, What does that connection mean? How is it actionable in a beleaguered society? What also exists in the ecosystem of food and peace? Labor, nourishment, purpose for men and women, safety for children, faith. I'm interested in this.

I don't often knowingly make poor choices these days. I'm old enough to know the cost of ignoring the voice of intuition. I'm glad I can hear her. Some people can't even hear that voice. How scary!

Last night I knowingly made the poor choice of skipping my farm class to watch the Rams-Bills game instead. The goal was to take a night off from the drive to Norco and relax, be in bed at a decent hour.

Well you really do become what you imbibe because it took me so long to wind down last night. My brain was full of noises it normally isn't. Play calls, helmets crashing into each other, raucous fans. I felt scattered and weirdly unable to remember who I was or what I was doing before the game. I felt like I had snorted a bunch of cocaine or something.

I'm exaggerating a little, but even now I feel strange and I'm not looking forward to the thrashing about I'll do today in search of the reset button. Don't you hate that? Anyway, the game was great. If there was a game to watch in recent memory, this was it. But I will not be doing that again for a while. Especially if the Rams are going to lose like that.

But! Do we occasionally need to make mistakes to receive those reminders only delivered by the Poor Choice Post? In the scheme of things, this was a small one. Also! Is the reset button simply receiving this lesson and forgiving myself?

YES!

I love it when my personal reading places me firmly on the sacred ground of all of my interests. When the signal is so strong, it leaves no room for doubt. In my re/forever reading of belonging: a culture of place by bell hooks, I came across this passage referencing the essay "Local Matters" by Scott Russell Sanders, found in his book Secrets of the Universe: Essays on Family, Community, Spirit, and Place:

It is rare for any of us, by deliberate choice, to sit still and weave ourselves into a place, so that we know the wildflowers and rocks and politicians, so that we recognize faces wherever we turn, so that we feel a bond with everything in sight. The challenge, these days, is to be somewhere as opposed to nowhere, actually to belong to some particular place, invest oneself in it, draw strength and courage from it, to dwell not simply in a career or a bank account but in a community...Once you commit yourself to a place, you begin to share responsibility for what happens there.

Within these words is great responsibility yes, but also the promise of hope and liberation that comes from making a choice.

Eager to read Sanders' essay, I did a search and stumbled upon "Finding Our Place" a 2010 blog post written by Curtis Ogden for the Interaction Institute for Social Change. I stumbled upon this reflection – a statement about the class privileged consumerism of places – and a question that consumes me that I wish consumed others more...

I’ve been thinking that there is a big difference between residing in and inhabiting a place.  And I believe this difference has a lot to say about whether we are simply consumers or also creators, observers or also participants, and if we are in this for the long haul.  I’m feeling the need to dig in more deeply.  You?  What’s the place of place in your own change efforts?

Further exploring Curtis's work, I discovered this treatise or values set on network-weaving: 20 Behaviors for Strong Network Culture and “Net Effects”. All are excellent, but here are a few that really stand out to me with my notes in end parentheses.

• Weave connections and “close triangles”. Closing triangles means introducing people to one another, as opposed to networking for one’s own self – creating a mesh or distributed structure rather than a hub-and-spoke structure with you at the center. (Maximizes your impact whilst deconstructing your power, and ensures organic continuity.)
• Create connections across boundaries/dimensions of difference. Invite and promote diversity in the network, which can contribute to resilience and innovation.
• Think, learn, and work out loud, in the company of others or through virtual means. This contributes to the abundance of resources and learning in the network. (It also vanquishes shame and embarrassment, which is especially important to model when working with youth – but also, everyone!)
• Promote others and their work.
• Create and use platforms (in-person convenings and virtual sites) that allow people to find one another, create new connections, match interests/offers with needs, and share information freely. (Artifacts or it didn't happen. Data of all kinds is being erased by people in power. It's critical that artists, creators, and practitioners of all kinds create mini-libraries of information.)
• Support, encourage, and practice self-organization (letting people organize their own work and decisions, rather than directing it from the top). (Model and trust, model and trust.)

Also, The Curse of Linearity in a Networked World (and the Gift of the Meandering Path, which serves up the helpful reminders on the meaningful inefficiencies inherent in organic network (and life) building.

Those who struggle tend to expect change to happen in a straight line: set a goal, make a plan, execute it step by step. Networks rarely work that way.

Another powerful aspect of networks is what is called “emergence” – innovation and new forms of organizing that result from diverse members interacting with one another without too many constraints. New thinking and insights come from the meeting of different fields, experiences, and perspectives. Creativity often comes through initially expanding options and inviting divergent thinking, which takes us away from the initial impulse to control.

The inconvenient truth is that networks, like Life itself, are…inconvenient. When we work hard to try to control and simplify them into linearity and predictability, we end up taking the vitality and potential out of them. While that may give us a short-term sense of being on top of things, the messiness will find some way of getting to us.