Guests
by Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard, February 26, 2010 11:01 AM
![](https://covers.powells.com/9781401310189.jpg) Yesterday I had my class in the library so we could use the computers to start a project. Bryan, a friend and coworker of mine who is retiring at the end of the year, came in as we were discussing MLA formatting for research papers. I was telling the students that they should always double space and use a 12-point font. Bryan looked at me with his characteristic mischievous twinkle in his eyes and said, "You know, I used to always tell kids that they had to use cursive, not printing, for essays. Now they are so used to typing everything, very few of them know how to read, let alone write, in cursive." It is true, times have changed. Even in 1995, my sophomore year of high school, I took a "typing" class, with actual typewriters; we had only a handful of computers in the classroom. Last night, Christopher and I went to the Joan Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice to see Raymond C. Offenheiser, the president of Oxfam, speak about foreign aid. It was almost as if he had glimpsed that moment in my classroom to come up with his analogy for one of the issues with U.S. Foreign Aid policy. He told us that current U.S. Foreign aid is guided by policies signed by President Kennedy in 1961. He first asked us to imagine what it would be like to navigate our own towns with maps made in 1961. When he then pointed out what a disaster it would be to ask students in 2010 to write a research paper using a library card catalogue, note cards, and a typewriter, I had to laugh. I make it a requirement for my students to use at least one book as a source for their research papers, and they are baffled about how to go about finding a book to help them. Another interesting fact is that the formula used to determine need and poverty comes from a Social Security Administration estimate also from the 1960s. At this time it was estimated that people spent 30 percent of their disposable income (income after taxes) on food. Despite the fact that people now spend a much larger percentage on housing and approximately 10 percent of their income on food, this formula is still being used. While card catalogues, note cards, and a basic word processing program were the tools I was taught to use to write a research paper, and they worked for me at the time, I would be ineffective as a teacher if these were the only methods I taught my students. I would be doing them a disservice and ignoring what they need to navigate the reality they live in. As a teacher, I have to evaluate my current students' needs to determine what is appropriate to help them learn. It seems to make sense, considering the world we live in today is drastically different than the realities of the 1960s, that we should reevaluate our aid systems so that they assess and reflect the needs of the changing world. Kerri P.S. This is our last day as guest bloggers. Thanks for
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Guests
by Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard, February 25, 2010 10:34 AM
![](https://covers.powells.com/9781401310189.jpg) I got home from work at about 5:30 on Monday because an issue had come up that I had to deal with and it couldn't wait. I got it taken care of, but I was frustrated that I was at school for over two hours after my last class ended, and I had not accomplished any of the grading that I planned to do that afternoon. Christopher was reading on the couch when I got home. When I finished telling him about work, I asked him about his day. He said, "Today is the day we started the blog for Powell's." My response was, "What are you talking about?" "You know, we are going to write a blog for Powell's for a week." While I insisted that this was the first I had heard about it, he was adamant that I knew because it had been in an email. However, this was an email I had never received. "This is the first I've heard of this," I said. "Oh, well, we are blogging. I did it today, can you do tomorrow?" This is fairly reminiscent of the way we started blogging in the first place. Christopher sprung it on me last minute. I believe he already had spent a few hours setting up a website before he came to me and told me we needed to take a picture for it. I had just gotten out of the shower and had a towel wrapped around my hair and no make-up on. I insisted that I at least wanted to dry my hair first and Christopher waited for me to get ready, but not before protesting, "Come on, how many people do you think are actually going to see this?" The picture from that day is still at the top of our blog. This week I was not ready to write. In addition to feeling like I did not get much done on Monday, I take a Spanish class on Tuesday night, Wednesday night was my school's second-semester back-to-school night, tonight we are going to an event at the Institute for Peace and Justice to see Raymond C. Offenheiser, the president of Oxfam, speak — and, on top of that, I am applying to an MA program and my application is due March 1. I am not intending to complain; it is just a busy week. Fortunately, this week Christopher has been helping with meal preparation. While working on our experiments with food, the issue of food preparation became a bit contentious at times. While eating on a dollar was Christopher's idea, I did most of the meal planning and cooking. As we moved on into our other experiments, the task of planning became more challenging, and still I got very little help. There were many times that the help I did get was grudgingly. When we set out to write about food, it did not really cross our minds that we would also be writing about the division of labor in homes (particularly ours) and our own relationship. There have been many changes since then, but still we are working to find a balance. Just this weekend I had to force him to sit down with me to plan a menu so that we could go grocery shopping, but he also has made two dinners this week since I had late nights. When I walked in the door from back-to-school night, there was a hot plate of spaghetti waiting for me
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Guests
by Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard, February 24, 2010 3:02 PM
![](https://covers.powells.com/9781401310189.jpg) When I got home from work yesterday, we had a message from a reporter at the Medill news service based out of Northwestern University in Chicago. The reporter, who covers the food and agriculture beat, had spent her day touring public schools in Chicago to see what menu changes were afoot for students. Apparently this is the year when the Chicago Public School system puts out their food services contract for bid, and coincidentally it is the same time that Michelle Obama is pushing her initiative to fight childhood obesity. Based on our experiments in eating for less, the reporter wanted to know if it would be possible for Chicago Public Schools to offer healthy options for students for just one dollar a meal. I told her that I thought it was possible, but unlikely. I asked questions about her experience, and she recounted being told about the positive strides these schools were making by offering baked Lay's potato chips instead of the original flavor, and using whole wheat flour in the pizza instead of using refined white flour. "Did you see students using cutlery?" I asked. "Now that I think about it, I didn't." "Were students drinking chocolate milk, or plain milk?" I continued. "All chocolate." "Uh-huh." As a former business consultant, she commented that most of the improvements she saw seemed to come laden with business commentary like, "When we switched to this healthier product we saw a sales drop of 60 percent at snack time." Say what? We need to take a step back. Is this about making money? Is that how we're going to frame what's best for youngsters? If what we're feeding our children in schools is contributing to childhood obesity and the early onset of type-2 diabetes (and it is), the costs related to this public health epidemic will grossly exceed those associated with fighting terrorism, transportation costs, and other public services that we pay for as citizens. Not only are we literally killing our children with the foods we provide them, we're going to pay a lot to do it. While I commend those who work in the school kitchens and Michelle Obama for doing her best to make a difference, if the difference is between two different types of potato chips, we're not doing right by our kids. "Less bad" still isn't good. Someone, somewhere has to be willing to stand up and say that we're not going to feed kids chips at school, and that a "choice" between pizza and a salad bar is no choice a nine-year-old will make with any type of expertise. Students need to be taught about food in schools. How to grow it, how to cook it, what it does to the body, and how to make sure we can eat a healthy and balanced diet. Schools need to be the models of this movement, not the unfortunate bureaucracies caught between the pressures of Big Food and a lack of funds for students. As we recount in our book, we ate well for less as individuals, so we know that it's possible. When the reporter asked me what I think should happen, this is what I told her: Double the amount of fruits and vegetables, far less meat and dairy, whole grains only, no "food" products with more than five ingredients, give them foods that they need a fork to eat (the unhealthy foods are usually handheld), and someone in power to "just say no" to chips, cookies, and chocolate milk. It may not be popular, but this is the change we need. To watch a great video about this topic, we recommend watching this TED talk with Jamie Oliver.
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Guests
by Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard, February 23, 2010 10:31 AM
![](https://covers.powells.com/9781401310189.jpg) Normally we spend Sundays relaxing and preparing for the start of a new school week, but this past weekend was a little different. Waking up just after seven in the morning, Kerri and I had to get ready for a TV interview with the local Fox News station here in San Diego. While viewers at home would get to see us in our kitchen and in our garden, the fantasy of the televised world would give no indication that my day actually started with picking up dog poop in the backyard. In my pajama pants and flip-flops, I worked my way through the muddy terrain that has become our dog's private outdoor park, thinking of what to say during the interview with the reporter. Would she ask us to cook a sample meal? Did she want to know what inspired us to eat on the cheap? How could I make this opportunity one to advocate for better food stamp allocation policies in our county? With one hand in an old newspaper bag, and the other holding the handle on a grocery bag, I continued groping through the calf-high clovers that had sprouted up due to the recent rain. I wondered if she would end up coming back here with the camera crew, and if they would appreciate the prep work I had done in order to prevent an unfortunate misstep. Upon her arrival we were surprised at her youth, and by the fact that there was no camera crew, or sound tech, or anyone else with her; she was on her own. While we worked our way through the niceties that are required for these accelerated relationships, I could see her trying to figure out how to tell this story about the couple who ate on a dollar a day. Checking her Blackberry for the press release, she hot-stepped through the landscape of related questions: "Why does an orange cost the same amount as a tablespoon of salad dressing?", "How many people are currently receiving SNAP benefits (food stamps)?", "Was it hard to do this?" One by one I responded to the questions, misspeaking at times, and hoping that she would know what to clean up. After letting her get footage of the inside of our cupboards and refrigerator, it was time to go out to the backyard so she could get shots of our garden. After my morning poop-patrol, I felt confident in letting Kerri lead her to the beginnings of our humble vegetable patch. Once she had shots of us pulling weeds, and showing off our rainbow chard, she packed up and informed us that the story would air both that evening, and on Monday's six o'clock news. When we finally saw the finished video online, we were thankful not only that we had tidied up for our guest, but for the time she had taken to tidy up our story to share with others.
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Guests
by Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard, February 22, 2010 10:59 AM
![](https://covers.powells.com/9781401310189.jpg) As we pulled up to the bookstore for our first official reading of On a Dollar a Day, I could tell that Kerri was a touch nervous. We'd been on national television, done plenty of radio and print interviews, but this was the first time we'd actually be sharing selections from the book for a public audience. When we walked in, we could see several people milling around near the signing table, and a few of my students had arrived early in order to stake out their seats right up front. Before long all the seats were full, and as it came time to get started there were so many people that folks were scouring the large chain store for chairs. A few people even took the kiddie chairs from the children's reading section. The energy in the room was palpable, and I called everyone to attention. I wanted to make sure everyone could hear us, so I shouted to Megan, a vegan-punk store employee, to turn down the Miles Davis that was blaring over the loudspeaker. Then we began. Kerri started on page one, not reading as much as shouting at the top of her lungs, and as I looked around I couldn't believe what a stir this conversation about food and economics had created. Kerri explained that we started this experiment to see how we could save some money at the grocery store, and that our awareness of global poverty led us to wonder if we could actually eat on a dollar a day. I picked up with a section where Kerri's frustration at my unwillingness to go back out to the store to pick up a missing ingredient forced her to strip down to her undies in order to prove a point. No longer could I use the excuse "I'm in my underwear" in order to avoid going to the store. But what happened next was something we never expected. Kerri finished up reading an excerpt about her grocery store days, when she denied taking a woman's larger food stamp coupons because they weren't attached to the book they came in (as the anti-fraud policy required), and the energy in the room shifted. From lively to serious, we had obviously struck a different chord. As we started to take questions from the audience, it was clear that these deeper issues of what people can do to save money during trying times, of what we can do to identify hunger in our communities, and of course, what we can do to help those in need, were more important than our little experiment. We're often reminded of this when friends, family, and readers of our blog look to us for help or guidance. Sometimes we can help, but other times it's difficult to know what to say. What we do know is that this conversation is one of the most important ones that we could ever be a part of, and for now, if you're in a position to help those around you, do so. If your community has a resource center that needs help or donations, give. If your state or county has unjust policies about getting access to food stamps, speak up. Most of all, do something. No matter how small, it is important that you do it
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