Diamond notes (9)

Won 12-7 on Tuesday night. 3-4 with a walk and a double. Scored 3 runs. We play in Elkhart tomorrow night and in Frankenmuth Saturday and Sunday.

song of the day

the pleasures of eating

"The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy and remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating. The knowledge of the good health of the garden relieves and frees and comforts the eater. The same goes for eating meat. The thought of the good pasture and of the calf contentedly grazing flavors the steak. Some, I know, will think of it as bloodthirsty or worse to eat a fellow creature you have known all its life. On the contrary, I think it means that you eat with understanding and with gratitude. A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes. The pleasure of eating, then, may be the best available standard of our health. And this pleasure, I think, is pretty fully available to the urban consumer who will make the necessary effort."

Wendell Berry, "The Pleasures of Eating"

Read the rest here: http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/pleasures-eating

CONFESSION:
I find this convincing and convicting. We buy local beef and pork (often from family members who raised them for show at the 4-H fair). But not yet chicken; I hope to change this. We eat out too much, and I've no idea where that food comes from. We grow a little food, but not enough. We compost, but not as much as we should.

It's about gratitude, Berry suggests, and too often I am ungrateful. But when I witness the astonished wonder with which Sydney picks a ripe cucumber from her garden, and the pleasure she takes in eating it--without any dip!!!--I am drawn into gratitude. Where does this magnetic attraction to the farm, to the garden, to the orchard I have been feeling these past years come from? It feels like the irresistable pull I once felt toward inner-city Kingston years ago. Will I have the courage to go?

a good song for today