Extolling the virtues of local food, cooking from scratch, and analyzing the food supply chain -- lessons at the heart of that cooking class -- don't seem so eccentric today, but they often retain a whiff of elitism. Many of the writers who've explored the American food system spin the higher cost of local and organic as a necessary inconvenience, and their calls for more careful food consumption are typically aimed at those with the resources to afford it. Little is said about the significant obstacles posed by cost and access for America's less-affluent families.Read it here.So when I heard that bestselling novelist Barbara Kingsolver (one of my favorites) was publishing a nonfiction account of a year of eating only local food, I was thrilled. Kingsolver's fiction draws its strength from her thoughtful, subtly political renderings of working-class and poor families. As such, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle seemed a natural candidate for bridging the gap between the lofty rhetoric of local, healthy food and the practical concerns of working people. Animal, like Kingsolver's fiction, is eminently readable. Nonetheless, it displays a regrettable lack of social context, doing much to reinforce -- and little to call into question -- the idea that sustainable food is an issue only the fit for the most privileged of tables.
Also, Dmitri Iglitzin maps out a comprehensive policy agenda for organized labor, one that goes beyond card check elections. And in his column this week, Terry Samuel ruminates on Bill Richardson's wily, buzzed-about new ads, and what they signify for both his campaign and the changing landscape of political advertising in general.
--The Editors
