Michelle Galimba

Literature is about the deep stories that we tell ourselves, about the paradigms by which we structure our understanding of the world we live in.  These deep stories are the framework by which we tell ourselves why we do what we do.

Agriculture is one of those deep stories that we live within,  It is a story that we make and a set of practices and a way of life. 

Although Crashed  primarily traces the financial crisis in the US and Europe during the period 2006-2018, Tooze brackets his tale of Euro-American financial implosions by sketching the “financial balance of terror” between China and the US and delineating how dangerous this ‘balance’ is. 

The drama that unfolded during the last few weeks over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court took many of us on a journey that no one could have predicted, and that became a drama about something much bigger than the Supreme Court. Bigger than party politics, or even right versus left. It became about being heard.

Bill Parke of Blackview Farm, a pasture-based livestock farm that uses rotational grazing and Holistic Management practices, was nice enough to sit down with me and talk for a bit about the farming life.

My daughter, being sixteen, just got her driver’s license. I asked her a question a few days ago: ” If you had to choose one and give up the other, which would you choose: a personal vehicle or the internet (including social media, wifi, smart phones, etc.)?” She thought for a bit and said: “It’s a hard question but I would choose the internet.  Nobody actually likes driving, it’s just something we have to do, but I really like having access to movies at home and all that other stuff.” She is just one young person, but the choice and the distinction that she made surprised me.