Communities and sorrow
Foodways and food history are about communities and individuals. They’re the story of people and the food people eat.
We all know that, in theory. In practice what changes the life of a community and rips out its soul is not something that often gets discussed in food histories. Sometimes it does. The extreme stuff. One day I’ll talk about that, when I find courage.
One of our regular 451 bloggers lives in Blacksburg, VA. Today I think it’s important to stop and remember the people of that particular community.
Instead of reading about food today, I’d be grateful if you took a moment to stop and think about him and his friends, about the son of SF writer Michael Bishop, about everyone who was killed in the shooting at Virginia Tech. Remember that history is about people, and when we lose those people we lose a part of ourselves.
Small communities are ponds and the stones that get thrown into them ripple out and touch the wider world. The stones thown diminish the community and hurt its citizens. These stones might be the tsunami that hit the Solomons, or an earthquake in Indonesia, or it might be a crazed gunman in Virginia. All these things hurt real people - they’re not just words on a page.
We should never forget the people who create the foodways we love and we should never lose sight of how terrible it is when they die before their time.
Let me send you to what my fellow 451 blogger has to say.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:03 am
[...] ones where I lose my temper and get all emotional. Death and food poisoning and women and wine , for instance. Or the ones where I get to tell anecdotes and [...]