Saying it better than I could.

I never used to read the paper. Save for the comics, of course... I have a distinct memory of myself at about 9 or 10 years old, walking away from my parents while we were in Barnes & Noble to take a look at the Calvin and Hobbes Sunday strip in the Star Tribune. My parents have always been big Pioneer Press people. As for myself, I didn't get it; as one who only read the funny pages, the sole fact that C & H was missing entirely from the comics section showed, in my mind, that philistines were running the show down in St. Paul. Then something happened.

The actual moment is hard to pin down, but roughly two years ago, I suddenly developed an appetite for good journalism. Ten o'clock television sound bites didn't do it for me anymore; now, my news was gathered in the morning, sprawled out on the couch with the paper after I returned from driving the bus route. Reading through the paper is a simple pleasure I don't often have the luxury of doing these days. I'd recommend trying it, if you get the chance - if nothing else, you learn that there's actual news happening in places outside the United States!!! Granted, the stories are usually single-paragraph blurbs on page A11 or something ridiculous like that, but it's better than nothing.

One of my favorite places in the paper is the Opinion section. This is primarily because the opinions expressed are not only the sole perspective of the author, with no assumed responsibility by the publisher and so on, but are generally much more well-reasoned than any other commentary on day-to-day events you could be reading. The variety of perspectives offered by the columnists who frequent these pages is like being at a party where everybody there is way, way smarter and well-informed than you are, and you're just content to listen. Today is a perfect example.

Yesterday's blog was the germination of an issue that will more than likely continue to show itself around these parts, namely sustainability and eating smarter. I don't know if I'll ever have anything really deep to say on the issue, but at the very least, this whole thing is helping me really think about why I believe the things I do, and putting them to the test by reasoning them out. Somebody said that the best way to know you understand something is to explain it to somebody else. Even if it's just mostly to myself, that's good enough for the both of us.

So, today I was reading through the paper before class, and I ran across Norbert Hirschhorn's column again. Dr. Hirschhorn is a poet/physician, which seems like an unlikely combination. (Then again, Wallace Stevens worked as an insurance agent for most of his life, which seems even stranger.) Dr. Hirschhorn lives in London, but taught at the University of Minnesota so the Press runs his column once in a while. This time, he happened to address the very issue I cracked into yesterday.

Please give it a read: "Have you eaten today?" In the article, the good doctor emphasizes the importance of eating as not only for survival, but the social and political impact that food has. "Food binds families, friends and communities," he writes. "In many languages the greeting is, "Have you eaten today?" In this time of cheap fast foods, single-parent families, long working hours and latch-key kids, we are in danger of loosening these ties, and thereby all become diminished."

As I've been writing more intently in the past two weeks than I ever have before, I've questioned what exactly I'm learning through this. My hope is that I'm growing, even though I don't feel it... maybe the growth is so subtle and the incline so slight that I won't notice it until much farther down. One thing I'm beginning to understand a little better is that writing forces you to observe much more carefully all that goes on around you and within yourself. This may be out of sheer necessity at first, but the human brain is a marvel in its ability to be trained in this way. This same principle is true for our eating habits: we can become more intentional about paying attention to what we eat and making a conscious effort to do so differently.

This is definitely an area I can grow in, as I'm sure others can as well. This has potential to be a case of information obesity, where I just read and read and read about issues like this and never actually do something with what I'm learning. Writing like Dr. Hirschhorn's column is inspiring, but reading something like that can give you a deep desire to affect change, but the movement required is something else entirely.

Movement is how new things are built in us, and among us.