Our world becomes more fragmented, the internet gives minorities a place. Sitting on the bus, I feel weird. Some people talk, they know each other already, but most of them listen to music or look at Facebook or just random stuff. It is good because the internet connects us. 10 years ago, I don’t know what is happening in the US. There are pen-pals at that time.
Sometimes we check social media because we are just bored. I do it sometimes without even thinking about it. But should I? I think we get bored because we need information, new information. And taking a walk outside gives me tremendous ideas. I think it is because it is nature, and it is changing all the time. There are so many LIVING things. I can feel the trees, the grass, I can see them moving with the wind, I can smell them, touch them. They are tangible. If taking a walk is like watching a movie, then it is an interactive and innovative movie. I can control where I go, and my body. Everything is unexpected, and it will not repeat. Familiarity is another thing. While I like Jazz, we often times just don’t need any surprise. That feeling is a feeling of home. Repetition, familiarity, the things that don’t change make us comfortable, and that I think is associated with home. It comes from our shelter, our home, and a stable and safe place to be. Jazz certainly has surprises. We like to see new things sometimes, but we also need a feeling of home. Our emotions, our spirits other than the physical existence.
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Spring has just arrived in Michigan, but it was still too early for most of the plants. Around the end of March, we went to the nature area by the Grand River. At Woldumar Nature Center, we noticed some green sprouts coming out of the ground. What are they? “They are called Wild Leeks or Ramps,” Karen said, “they are edible.” But what are other edible things we can find in the woods? We can find different types of information on the edible plants or parts of plant online nowadays, flowers, mushrooms, clovers, ramps, acorns, Dandelions, Cat Tails, berries, syrups, Wild Asparagus, Stinging Nettles, to name a few. But instead of going into details of how to identify them, why not think about our relationship with nature through the perspective of food? I usually eat three meals a day, but how often do I eat food from the wild? In Michigan, we have easy access to the woods, but since I was not raised in Michigan, unlike some of my classmates who live “in the woods,” the woods become mysterious. I’m not confident to gather food in the wild, so I get food from grocery stores, but in China, I do eat food that is “wild”. I remember my grandma sometimes harvest a kind of weed (which looks like a kind of mustard) in the countryside, or in the park to make dumplings. She also uses the flowers of pagoda tree, together with flour, to make a delicious “stuffing.”
Plants not only make us not hungry, but it can also be used as a folk remedy. In China, herbs date back to Shennong, literally Divine Farmer. Shennong belongs to a group of mythological and sage-like emperors said to have lived some 4,500 years ago. Shennong has been thought to have taught the ancient Chinese not only their practices of agriculture but also the use of herbal drugs. In Nature’s Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants, Samuel Thayer argued that the earliest agriculture in humans started with the co-evolution of foragers with their wild plants. He went further to point out that the benefits of today’s foraging can be different from those of our earliest ancestors. We twenty-first-century humans may not depend on foraging in the wild for our existence, but we gain in innumerable ways-from developing a deep connection to nature to celebrating biodiversity’s rich tastes and culinary bounty. (This is an excerpt from a book review) There is industrial agriculture, there are farmer’s markets, and there are city dwellers who seek to reconnect with nature by selecting organic products and local sources. It’s true that wild edibles have a different taste, there is also an idiom in China “ ” which loosely translated as “delicacies of every kind”. People love to have different experiences, and sometimes the idea is expressed through the food we eat. Regarding wild edibles, should we eat some of them simply because they taste great (such as wild leeks)? I know some became very expensive and went into extinction because people over harvest them. We should think of it in a sustainable point of view. |
Mike HouFull-time designer thinker, part-time explorer dreamer. Archives
August 2017
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