Reading Response to "An Open Letter from a Farmer to Angry Vegetarians"

For starters, I really enjoyed this piece. The perspective is one that I really respect, as the author is someone who comes from the same initial background as her critics. She changed her view of vegetarianism for very valid reasons that many who subscribe to that lifestyle misunderstand and demean. People denounced her actions as murder, for crying out loud. This shows a lack of basic comprehension and illustrates one flaw I've found with vegetarians and vegans (obviously a minority, though) who are very high and mighty about their perfectly self-aware and loving life decisions, and get a sense of superiority from their lifestyle. They view the author of this article as a betrayer, which is frankly silly as all hell.
I like the way the piece is structured, too. It sets up with an introduction to give background, and then what follows is essentially an open letter to those people who don't understand and look down upon her life decisions. She justifies her actions with facts that vegetarians don't always take into consideration; things like the fact that the clearing of land to grow the crops that feed them displace critters and destroy their natural habitats, killing off animals even though they're not eaten. People think without really thinking and diving into the possibility of eating meat sustainably and morally. The types of letters she received from people show that explicitly. She deconstructs the kinds of things angered vegetarians accuse her of and gives very striking counter-points that illustrate a sort of unconscious hypocrisy.
I personally like the idea of eating local meat only and the stressing of a personal connection to the production of one's food. I think it is a very noble, intelligent way to tackle eating in a society that has an industrialized approach to food that has distanced the majority of people from the reality of what eating is. If we had a sort of renaissance regarding food where it became community based all around the country, and eventually the globe, think of how much more tight-nit humanity could be. Hopefully our future is a bright one.

Service Learning Reflection

Thankfully, as this assignment's rolled around for the second time, I am actually prepared with an experience of service to reflect upon! I went to the Lord's Acre farm to give my time and labor to people who need it. Like in most instances of my life, I had no real solid expectation of how I was going to react to the new experience, and I tried my damnedest to make sure my attitude was one of open-mindedness and willingness to put forth effort. With this mind-set, one can tackle just about anything life can throw at them.

This is a sidenote regarding a personal quirk I have; I don't like to take pictures of life events very often, as I think it is sometimes better to have the memory stored in my mind and only there. So naturally, I didn't take any pictures of the Lord's Acre, though I did soak in the view around me to say the least. It was a beautiful day of a nearly perfect temperature, with sprawling views of the Blue Ridge all around us, fall colors abounded, and any mediocre attempts at iPhone photography could have easily spoiled that for me.

At the farm though, we helped as being a source of large scale free labor. Usually those poor souls at the Lord's Acre are very shorthanded unless it's a volunteer session. It did feel rewarding knowing that us going out and having a day away from campus working with the land not only helped my mental state, but that it helped a very nice organization/establishment. I stripped up their drip-irrigation lines to clear the way to harvest their sweet potato crop, and later helped in the actual collection. I also helped weed some sections of their beds, and it was fun to just dig around in the ground and forget about obligations back at school or in my daily life. It was nice to feel like a part of a community of people who help one another because they can. In the future with my service experiences, I'd love to have them be as personally rewarding as this Lord's Acre trip was. It turned my sort-of-apathy towards service learning around a good bit. I won't dread the idea of giving my time from now on, I believe.

Reading Response

Two more articles from "Food Matters" are what will be examined in this response; "Downsizing Supersize" by Surowiecki and "Why Shame Won't Stop Obesity" by Khullar. Both pieces take a look at perceptions regarding a food related issue and attack them from an educated point of view. When taking a look at the credentials of the authors, one sees that these are two people who have professional connections to the statements they are making, Khullar being an aspiring doctor & pre-med student, while Surowiecki is a financial columnist and journalist who is using a political happening to talk about an issue regarding portions and federal regulations. I noted that the pieces are similar in their rhetoric, using a casual tone to present factual information. These are not academic sources by any means (a magazine article from the New Yorker and a blog post respectively), and the less serious tone benefits the material well in each instance.

Surowiecki's piece made me ponder on why we are so prone to overeat/over-drink just for the sole reason that portion sizes have skyrocketed in the last 3 or 4 decades. I believe it is exacerbated by our attitudes regarding instant gratification and a glorification of pleasure and convenience that pervades the country's collective mind. We as consumers always want to just continue consuming and consuming, believing all the while that they are getting a bargain on their 10$ purchase from McDonalds that increases their chance for heart disease. Rhetorically speaking, he tackles his topic from a political standpoint, disseminating its message in an informative manner. He shares stories of studies in different instances to back up and almost frame his arguments. I like his choice to end the article with likening the people effected to lab rats and subjects of experiments, after using social experiments as examples for the majority of the piece.

Khullar's article comes from a casual source, a blogpost, but is a bit more academic in nature due to the background of the author himself. He was a pre-med student writing about issues he'd been directly working with in his short time in his field. He brings forth personal anecdotes coupled with evidence to support his claims. He even proposes a few solutions to his issue, the Shaming of Obesity, at the end of the article. I also enjoy the rhetorical choice of including himself blatantly in the middle of the issue instead of distancing himself as the author, sharing his own experiences that shaped how he views the obesity epidemic. Speaking about the content purely, my topic of my research essay aligns with the issue of giving the poor options that are healthier and more convenient than fast food, so it gives nice perspective into my own topic I'll be delving more fully into in the next week or so.