opinion | knitting a life

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Philosophical interlude

Posted in opinion on February 8, 2010| 2 Comments »

I am not a professional blogger. When I started this blog I wasn’t really sure what my posts would be about, or how often I would post, or how the posts would fit together. The name of my blog, Knitting a Life, seemed like a good idea at the time; among other things, I am a knitter, and I had a hard time imagining that any blog I authored wouldn’t have some knitting in it somewhere.

To tell you the truth, once I came up with a title for this blog I didn’t worry about it much. Until a friend told me that he didn’t read my blog because it was about knitting.

That stopped me. I tried to explain to him that my blog is NOT about knitting, but he was convinced that it was and that he would never read it as a result.

Of course, knowing that one person isn’t reading my blog won’t make me stop writing it. If I worried a lot about who was reading these posts I would do things a lot differently than I do. My friend’s comment did make me think about what I mean by “Knitting a Life.” Not necessarily what I meant when I started this project, but what it has come to mean over the few months I have been working on it.

What is this blog about? One way to answer that is to look at what I post about. Knitting, sometimes, but also food and family,

travel and teaching, places and passions.

Is this blog about knitting? I guess some people would say that, since there have been posts about my knitting projects and about yarn. I don’t think of it that way, though; I think this blog is about knitting a life, mine.

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Holiday thoughts

Posted in family, opinion, teaching on December 9, 2009| 1 Comment »

I have mixed feelings about the end of year holiday season. I love the expressions of thanks and gratitude that people are encouraged to make, the way people think about how to make others happy, the gatherings of family and friends, the food, the festive decorations.

I particularly look forward to spending time with my family: cooking and eating together, sipping wine and talking late into the night, running through my brother’s neighborhood in the cold mornings listening to old favorites on my iPod, reading to my nephew before bed, starting a new knitting project with my niece.

Yet, this time of year I am also constantly reminded of how fortunate I am. On these short, cold days I shiver uncomfortably when I see homeless people bundled in sleeping bags under a bridge as I drive past in my heated car. I remember some of my former middle and high school students who, over winter vacation, had one less warm meal to look forward to every day. I think about the story I heard on the radio about people begging online for gifts of clothing or toys for their children this year.

In the short term, I try to do things that will make a small difference with donations of time or money to the Oregon Food Bank, the School BackPack Program or other worthy charities and services for people in need.

I also focus on my work preparing teachers and others who will work with young people in schools because I believe that is another way to promote change and make the world better for more people over the long term.

Of course people are not only in need over the holidays and the changes we need to make as a society won’t happen if people don’t think about them year round. Maybe if we start now, during a time of year when we are encouraged to think about others, we will continue during the rest of the year, when our daily busy-ness makes it more of a challenge.

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School lunch

Posted in food, opinion on December 4, 2009| 2 Comments »

If you read this blog at all regularly, you know that I am very interested in almost everything to do with food. I spend a lot of time thinking about where my food comes from and how to prepare meals that are healthy, tasty and appetizing.

I am lucky to live with someone who shares my love of good food and of cooking and to have other family members who feel the same way. My sister-in-law is even a personal chef with two food-related blogs of her own (here and here).

Though I am certainly not a chef, my love of cooking and my concerns about food consumption and production intersect with my professional life, particularly when it comes to thinking about how to help children and young adults learn to eat well and to know more about where their food comes from. I am also interested in how to more closely link schools with local food sources.

My interest in these issues hasn’t gone unnoticed; today a good friend sent me this link to Ann Cooper’s Renegade Lunch Lady website and that inspired this post.

In my own efforts to address these issues, I’ve been inspired by Alice Waters’s exceptional Edible Schoolyard Project to work with teachers to explore the feasibility of planting school gardens and to develop lesson plans that connect food and nutrition with the content taught in social studies, health and biology classes;

I’ve participated in school-university partnerships working to develop programs that make it easier for schools to buy food directly from local farmers;

and I’ve served on the advisory board for a School-based Health Center that addressed concerns about the kinds of snacks and drinks available for purchase in school vending machines.

There are many challenges to this kind of work: changing kids’ attitudes towards food, making it possible for schools to utilize local food sources instead of relying solely on federal subsidies, enlisting the help of school lunch personnel and finding ways to involve parents and community members in these efforts are just a few.