Hasta La Gadget!

A couple of months ago I was invited to give a keynote address at the University of Vermont’s Food Systems Summit, held last week at UVM in Burlington. I get a lot of these invitations. Keynote lectures are a part of the job at Food First. Fly in, give talk, go to reception, get up early and fly home. But Vermont is special. It just passed regulations to label GMOs and an increased minimum wage law. I asked my hosts if there would be any time to meet some people in the food movement and see some of the state’s famous dairy farms and maple syrup operations. They graciously suggested I arrive a day early so they could show me around.

I was met early Monday morning by Doug Lantagne, Dean of UVM Extension, UVM Professor Teresa Mares, Naomi Wolcott-MacCausland, the Migrant Health Coordinator for Extension’s “Bridges to Health” program, and Jessie Mazar, Project Coordinator for Huertas, a food security kitchen gardening project. They took me on a tour to Franklin County, on the Canadian border. It is Vermont’s foremost dairy region. Little did I know what the combination of “border” and “dairy” meant to Franklin County’s farming communities.

Rural Vermont in June is picture-postcard charming; gently rolling green fields and deciduous forests with magnificent old red barns and quaint two-story farmhouses nestled among the creeks and streams that drain into Lake Champlain. A Vermonter and forester, Doug provided a running commentary on the history, agroecology and culture of the region as we cruised along the neatly maintained country roads.

I spent much of my youth living and working on family dairy farms in Northern California. The dairies of my childhood — and the farming way of life — is largely gone today, so I got a warm, nostalgic feeling seeing that many Vermonters have managed to weather the ongoing disaster of our country’s federal dairy policies. There were also lots of greenhouses full of fresh greens and vegetables. These are sold locally and regionally, from Burlington to New York City. Vermont itself is chock full of farmers markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), local food enterprises, organic restaurants, Slow Food chapters, farm to school projects, farm to plate initiatives, farm incubators… Vermonters pride themselves for their strong local governments, progressive politics and spirit of independence — Vermont was its own republic before it became a state.

“We are the Mecca of local food systems,” said Doug, only half-joking. Then we stopped at a farm.

We were met by two milkers on the way to their chores. It was pretty clear they weren’t from Vermont. They were short, powerfully-built indigenous men. We spoke with them briefly, not wanting to keep them from their work. I noticed their Spanish had the lilt common to southern Mexico. They were from Chiapas. My hosts took me to a weathered trailer to meet “Juana”, the wife of one of the milkers. Juana was one of a number of women who work with Bridges to Health’s Huertas Project that helps farmworker families grow vegetables to improve the family diet. Her garden had been recently planted so there wasn’t too much to see, but it was clear that in a few weeks, chilies, tomatoes, eggplant, cilantro, squash and herbs were set to take over her back yard. Even though Juana had no previous gardening experience in Mexico (she told me that in her village farming was men’s work), this was her second garden in Vermont and she was a believer.

Juana invited us in and we chatted about gardening, Vermont and Mexico over homemade tamales. I was curious about Bridges to Health. I’d worked with school and family gardens in Mexico in the 1970s. In my experience, the patio behind the house on smallholder farms was the domain of the woman of the house. It was a laboratory and she was the scientist. New seeds, cultivars, fertilization and cultivation techniques were often introduced, managed and evaluated under her watchful eye. Taste, ease of cooking, nutritional value and adaptability into the larger food and farming system were all part of her criteria. When cultivars were successful, they were often incorporated into the field. The knowledge of the new practice or cultivar was shared broadly through extended family and village networks, farmer-to-farmer. I believe that in this way women were essential to the success of Campesino a Campesino, a smallholder’s movement for sustainable agriculture that spread agroecological farming practices to a quarter of a million farm families in Central America during the 1980s and 90s.

When I asked my friends from UVM Extension if they were using farmer-to-farmer techniques to spread Juana’s new knowledge to other farmworker households, they shook their heads.

Then they told me something that broke my heart.

Juana can’t leave the farm as she pleases. Neither can her husband or the other milker. In fact many of the undocumented farmworkers living close to the Canadian border in Vermont don’t dare to leave the farms where they work on a regular basis out of fear of being picked up by the U.S. Border patrol. Those who live in these border communities don’t have the ability to see friends or family, go to the store, go to church or go see a doctor as needed. They don’t go anywhere out of fear of being seen. They are invisible.

I’d spent twenty years working with campesina families just like these. Their cultures are rooted in family and village life. They are deeply social because in the often precarious living conditions in which they live, they must depend on each other. Their culture is their resiliency. To be alone is to be painfully vulnerable — and to be profoundly sad.

The Huertas project has tried bringing gardeners together to share seeds, plants and produce. Since the start of the project five years ago, they have invited gardeners to one or two canning workshops per year on a local family farm to help everyone process the tremendous surplus of vegetables they raise. Last year, the participants’ greatest fear became reality when a volunteer driver was stopped by the Border Patrol while bringing farmworkers back home after a harvest gathering. Now, the project coordinators shuttle seeds and plants between gardening families, share information and just visit with the people confined to their trailers and makeshift apartments.

I’ve seen a number of labor camps over the years and I’ve visited many farmworker families in the United States. These farmworkers seemed comparatively better off. (Though I learned this isn’t always the case.) Their wages are over $7/hour; housing is rustic but provided without charge. People told me most family farmers cared about their workers and did their shopping for them. It’s not the farmer’s fault our northern border has become militarized and immigration reform is mired in a dysfunctional Congress. Still, I had never seen such grinding solitude. Living in the shadows of Vermont’s local food mecca, these men and women suffer a structural violence that strikes at the core of who they are as a people. I shudder to think of their isolation during winter months.

We went to another farm to visit “Tomás”, a middle-aged man who insisted on feeding us a second lunch. The rice, beans, salad and homemade salsa were delicious. Then we visited his garden, one of several he maintains on the farm where he works. In Mexico, Tomás used to be a curandero, an herbalist. The garden was a riotous mix of herbs, greens and vegetables. He grows a lot of the seedlings that are shared with the other gardeners. He bounced enthusiastically between rows, harvesting vegetables and giving us bits of herbs to smell and taste.

“I don’t actually eat much of this,” he confessed, “I like to give it away to everyone!”

It occurred to me that Tomás gardened to take the edge off his loneliness. Not only did it fill up his time, it brought people to see him. It was something for which he had been respected in his own village. His positive attitude was infectious and we all enjoyed being together talking about gardening, health, friendship. It occurred to me that Tomás was one of the quintessential promotores (village extensionists) typical of the Campesino a Campesino movement: curious, enthusiastic and dedicated to farming and to his people. Then I learned that after eleven years of working on this dairy farm, Tomás had recently been caught by the Border Patrol. He had a court date and would in all likelihood be deported. The upside, I learned, was that he was, for the first time in a decade, moving freely around the county. If he got stopped by the Border Patrol all he had to do was show his court summons.

From there, Naomi took us to her family’s farm where they raise vegetables, milk cows and (like most Vermont farmers) make maple syrup. She has recruited all of them to work with the Huertas project. It turns out that many of Vermont’s farmers feel very badly about the draconian conditions imposed on their workers by the Border Patrol. Local law enforcement is decidedly less enthusiastic than the feds about rounding up undocumented farmworkers and even the governor has reportedly asked Homeland Security to back off a bit. A local organization, Migrant Justice, has worked hard to open access to driver identification cards to all residents regardless of documentation status and pass bias-free policing policies at the state level. Nevertheless, these efforts are necessarily constrained by the surveillance of the federal border.

The next day the Food Systems Conference got underway with speakers, panels and time for discussion. A lively crowd of some 300 social workers, academics, students, farmers and good old Vermont citizens turned out to address the issues of sustainability and equity in the food system. I learned quite bit. When it was my time to speak, I launched into a 40-minute tirade about the atrocities of the corporate food regime and the courageous efforts of farmers and consumers around the world to establish food justice and food sovereignty in the face of what seem to be insurmountable odds. I think I might have overwhelmed a lot of people, including myself. The fact is, the transformation of our food system is hard and often depressing work. The rules and the institutions are stacked in favor of the status quo.

As I finished up, in the midst of the sinking feeling I felt facing 300 people yearning for something positive, I was reminded of Tomás. He comes from one of many communities that have been devastated by free trade agreements and the industrial agricultural expansion of the corporate food regime. Yet somehow, Tomás refuses to give up hope.

Hope, is not the same as optimism. Optimism is when you believe things are going to turn out well. With one billion hungry despite record harvests (and record monopoly profits) it is hard to be optimistic about the global food system. It is hard to see how we are going to dismantle the carbon-spewing practices of industrial agriculture. It is very hard, sometimes, to be optimistic. Hope, however, is different. Hope is when you do things not because you are confident in an outcome but because you believe they are the right thing to do. You hope things work out for the best. Like Tomás, planting and sharing even though he is about to be deported.

For Tomás, for Juana and for hundreds of millions of others in the U.S. and around the world, giving up hope is simply not an option. We need to stand with them — for everyone’s future. Gracias, Tomás.

When German Vengerveld and Valentin Mumzhiev get out of Russian prison, Vladimir Putin may not be the country’s president. The duo were among the white power gang members sentenced earlier this week in Saint Petersburg, reports Russia’s Investigative Committee, a federal investigative body somewhat analogous to the FBI.

The Moscow-based SOVA Center for Information and Analysis has been following the case against the group “NS/WP Nevograd” (NS/WP stands for National Socialist / White Power) since eleven gang members were arrested in 2010. Four years later, German Vengerveld was sentenced to 24 years in prison, and Vladimir Mumzhiev received a 16-year sentence. His brother Valentin Mumzhiev and friend Artem Zavyalov were given 14 years each; Arseny Miroshnichenko received a 9-year sentence; Yevgeny Koryabkin and Dmitry Abalishin received 7 years each, and Kirill Prisyazhnyuk will be free in 3 years. Roman Veits got off easy, walking away with a suspended two-year sentence.

NS/WP members were found guilty of ten murders and five physical assaults, one church arson, blowing up a bus stop and placing fake explosives on a subway car.

The Russian press identified Vengerveld and Valentin Mumzhiev as “the most active” of the neo-Nazi bunch, specializing in attacks on ethnic minorities, the homeless and alcoholics in Saint Petersburg, Russia’s renowned cultural capital. German Vengerveld’s father was at the sentencing and told a Gazeta.Ru reporter that his son has expressed remorse about his deeds and aplogized to the victims’ families. Vengerveld’s mother is currently on trial for assisting her son’s failed escape attempt; the pepper spray he used on his convoy during transfer was allegedly provided by her.

Valentin Mumzhiev said the attacks were “spontaneous,” yet the Russian government begs to differ. The Investigative Committee’s press release states the attacks were “meticulously planned” by a group whose composition changed little through the years and whose members were on the same page ideologically, perfecting their killing methods over the years. Seeking publicity, the gang videotaped its crimes and made the recordings publicly available on its web-site, ns-wp.ws, which is still operational since the domain is regestered in Samoa.

SOVA reports that in December 2009 “members of NS/WP posted a video showing the murder of an African man. The video was titled ‘New Year – New Terror.'” The video proved key to the gang’s eventual downfall, as the investigation into their activities began after the clip was uploaded online.

NS/WP’s founder Georgy Timofeev wasn’t among the convicted this week. Timofeev was sentenced in 2012, aged 21, after selling out his comrades and signing a deal with the prosecutors. Disavowing the Nazi ideas, cooperating with law enforcement and testifying against himself and his former underlings worked out well for then 21-year-old gang leader: Georgy Timofeev is now serving his 13-year sentence. Dmitry Negudov, another gang member who ended up making a deal with the prosecution, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

Timofeev’s murderous outfit was created in 2009, following in the footsteps of the Borovikov and Voevodin gang, whose activities halted in 2006 after a period of ferocious violence in 2003-04 for which some of the members received life imprisonment in 2011.

The verdict against NS/WP comes less than a week after the tenth anniversary of the murder of ethnologist and rights activist Nikolai Girenko at the hands of the Voevodin-Borovikov gang. Professor Girenko was shot dead in his own apartment on June 19, 2004. A decade later, the Russian government is still struggling to curtail the appetite for destruction of NS/WP and the like.

Think sexually transmitted diseases are a modern problem? Guess again.

For centuries, man has battled with the fire down below.

So it should come as no surprise that some pretty famous historical figures should have been wrapping it up before they hit the sheets.

As a psychologist with a private practice focusing on young adults, I watch The Kardashians reality show through a different lens than my peers. Some devour the show like cotton candy, stuffed into your mouth and savored like a drug. “You can actually feel the pleasure hitting your brain,” said one friend. Others see a bowl of mixed nuts on a crowded bar, covered in microscopic fecal matter, to be avoided at all cost.

I follow the Kardashians as if they were a family in therapy, sitting on my couch, working through their substantial issues. I listen intently for the subtleties of their communication, hidden alliances, desperate cries for attention, validation or connection. Fortunately, much of what is said on the show is not veiled or hidden. As a credit to the family, they often go off script and reveal themselves to the world with startling authenticity.

This was the case when Rob Kardashian, the only son in a family of five girls, began to open up about his father, the deceased lawyer Robert Kardashian. Robert Kardashian was one of the lawyers for OJ Simpson during his infamous murder trial. In 2003, Robert Kardashian Sr. died of esophageal cancer; Rob Jr. was just 16 years old. During one touching episode, Bruce Jenner recalled how Robert Kardashian, on his deathbed, asked him to look after the Kardashian children: Courtney, Kim, Khloe and Robert, providing for them financially and emotionally. While Bruce, as the step-father, seems like a positive role-model for the Kardashian clan, his relationship with Rob seems to lack real emotional depth. Rarely have I seen an episode where the two are connecting in a meaningful way.

As a therapist, I wonder if Rob really ever got over his father’s death and allowed Bruce into his life. It seems that Rob has not fully dealt with his “father hunger,” the natural longing to fill the hole left by a deceased father. The Kardashian daughters seem to have done this, finding men to marry and feeling close enough to Bruce to have him walk them down the aisle. The Kardashian daughters were adults when their father died, which perhaps lessened the psychological blow of his loss.

Beth Erickson PhD, in her book Longing for Dad: Father Loss and Its Impact, sheds light on this “father hunger” and the psychological considerations when one loses a father so young. Just at the moment when Rob was separating developmentally from his mother and turning towards his father for guidance and wisdom, his role-model was gone, leaving Rob alone and helpless. Who would take Rob to Laker or Dodger games, to fish or to show him how to tie a Windsor knot? Erickson writes that fathers create just such connections as a way to initiate sons into manhood. I suspect Bruce tried to connect with Rob, but for whatever reason, the bond didn’t cement.

In one touching episode, Rob broke down emotionally to his mother about how much he missed his father and how lost he felt. I found it heart-wrenching as he cried, speaking longingly of his father. Rob’s mother, Kris Kardashian, was warm and comforting, but she knew this was a wound she could not heal. Kris held him as he told her he wanted to pursue a career as a lawyer. I thought that was admirable, considering his celebrity status and the privilege that already surrounded him. And then it struck me. As a lawyer he would symbolically be close to his father, and perhaps from heaven gain his father’s respect. That validation, transmitted from father to son, creates self-confidence and allows a boy to move forward with courage.

Rob seems stuck in his life, waiting for something to happen or for someone to come and guide him. When Khloe married Lamar Oden, the professional basketball player, Rob was immediately drawn to the strong male presence in his life. The two bonded quickly. It was no surprise when I heard that Rob had actually moved in with his sister and Lamar. Was this the father figure that Rob longed for? Lamar seemed to affirm Rob and validated him as a man, even when his sisters and mother couldn’t. Rob appeared to be doing better during this period of time. Unfortunately, Lamar had emotional problems of his own and wasn’t a stable father figure or mentor to Rob.

Rob’s other brother-in-law, Scott Disick, has many exemplary qualities necessary to be a role-model. He has confidence, intelligence, a good work ethic, a willingness to work on his own issues and an apparent concern for Rob. Scott, however, lacks the one quality necessary to be a good mentor or surrogate father — humility. A good parent puts the wants and needs of the child first. It’s obvious to me, and probably to Rob, that Scott cares more about Scott than anyone in his near orbit.

Interestingly, Kim seems to be the source of much of Rob’s anger. She’s the most successful of the siblings and a direct reflection of Rob’s inability to make something of himself. Perhaps Rob thinks that if his father were alive, he would have his guidance and support to be a more successful young man. Dr. Erickson writes that “A father is the gatekeeper to his son’s healthy masculinity.” Without Robert Kardashian to guide his son, Robert Jr. wouldn’t be able to cross over the threshold to manhood. I believe Robert Sr. knew this instinctively when he asked Bruce to fill this role.

Erickson also writes that “men that did not have a father to initiate them into manhood become very dependent on women to take care of them and even define them.” But what happens when the women in your life are not capable of supporting you? I wondered if Rob looked to his mother and sisters for affirmation but found them lacking. Either because they are simply not men or too self-involved, the women in Rob’s life seem unable to support his development. On the show he often complained that they thought of him as a “loser.” To her credit, Kim empathizes with her brother’s “father wound” so beautifully. In one televised family therapy session, Kim cries, telling the therapist that her mother “doesn’t know how to raise a son that well. That was Dad’s thing, and now that Dad isn’t here… it’s like no one’s fault.”

I stopped watching the show in recent years, but kept an eye on the tabloids. They reported that Rob had a drug problem. Rob gained weight, etc. My interest, however, was really peaked when I saw that Rob had left Kim’s wedding in Italy a day early. The tabloids said that there was a dispute over his significant weight gain, and that Kim didn’t want him in the wedding photos. Regardless of the reasons, I could sense that Rob needed help and that his situation was getting worse.

Not knowing him at all, and, only gathering information from television and tabloids, I can only theorize what Rob Kardashian is going through. Losing a father is not something I thankfully ever experienced. My father did suffer that event, though, at the age of five. I know that loss had a tremendous impact on his life.

I’m a sensitive person, which is probably why I was drawn to a helping profession. My heart goes out to Rob, and my hope is that he gets the help he needs. As a psychologist, I have worked with young men with a variety of issues, including the loss of a parent. I have seen young men blossom simply by receiving the affirmation they so desperately needed.

If Rob were on my couch, I would allow him space to grieve his father. It’s not just his father’s physical absence that needs to be acknowledged, but the meaning of that loss in his life. I would help Rob see how lost he feels without him and how difficult it is to move forward without his father’s guidance and wisdom. I would validate this dependency and praise Rob for trying so hard amidst the confusion and chaos. Through a process called “Empty Chair,” Rob would get to address the “unfinished business” with his deceased father, who is imagined in an empty chair in front of him. Through this conversation, Rob might realize that he has already received tremendous gifts from his father. Perhaps he would learn that his father “has his back,” loves and supports him, whether a success or failure, as a lawyer, teacher or businessman. Mostly though, throughout Rob’s time with me in therapy, I would validate and affirm him. By doing this over weeks and months, the hope is that Rob could begin to affirm himself, revealing the path to self-confidence.

Having lived in Los Angeles, I can testify to the wonderful male therapists in that city. Finding a male therapist shouldn’t be difficult; finding one that Rob respects might be more challenging. Like shopping for clothes, it’s important to try out different therapists and find the one that’s a good fit. In the end, I’m confident Rob Kardashian will find his way, hopefully guided on the path by a male therapist who welcomes him, “father wounds” and all.

—-

George Sachs is a clinical psychologist and owner of the Sachs Center in New York City.

 Imina has created tiny little robots that can be used to help scientists and researchers manipulate tiny objects under a microscope, giving them a tiny helping hand when looking at very small objects. The video above, filmed by AtoZNano, shows the miBots in action. They’re controlled via a joystick-like interface and the tiny probe can measure wires and nanotubes and can even help out… Read More