Your Great-Grandmother Thinks You’re Crazy
Decatur Metro | February 23, 2010From the Wheel report of Carlo Petrini’s talk at Emory last night…
“When my grandfather finished his meal, he would collect the bread crumbs from the table, and if one fell to the floor, he would pick it up and kiss it,” Petrini said.
But now, he said, young people are not aware of the cultural importance of food.
“If your great-grandmother knew about this, she would be very anxious,” Petrini said, as he pointed to a student in the front row. “If you could talk to her and tell her you live in a society where you spend more to lose weight than to eat, your great-grandmother would say you are crazy.”
Latest from Decaturish
YOU’RE!!! NOT YOUR, YOU’RE!!!!!!! GAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!
*faints*
Stupid editor. That dude is so fired.
Smelling salts?
I’ve given up on DM’s grammar, especially with regard to its/it’s. If I told him every time he used the wrong one, his email box would be full. But we all still love him, right?
Grammar and spelling are so 20th century.
DM, I’m actually a freelance editor with quite a bit of spare time. If the whole grammar thing ever gets under your skin, I’d be more than willing to talk about an arrangement where I could proofread your posts before they go up.
Toss me an email if you’re ever interested in something like that.
Thanks much for the offer flutter, but it doesn’t really bother me all that much. Though I can’t say I don’t wish I did it less frequently.
But I’m a one-man show and I don’t have the checks-and-balances of other news outlets. And I’ve noticed it really shows when I’m tired. The last two times people have ALL-CAPSed me, I’ve noticed it’s on a day when I’m just ridiculously exhausted.
But for everyone else. It’s is ALWAYS a contraction, NEVER a possessive. It’s=it is, it was, it has. But I put the pot on its bottom, the chair on its legs.
And yes, I still love him.
What’s his point? If I tried to explain the internet to my great-grandmother or that using the “n” word in reference to black people is wrong, her head would likely explode. Different times, different troubles, different mindsets.
His spiel is that food is not just a thing we buy (cost vs. value argument), but rather, that food connects us to the world (where a disconnect causes both social and physical problems) and should connect us to one another (family/cultural eating rituals leading to individual wellbeing). So, great-grandma would be horrified in the same way we are horrified about say, dog fighting or eating cats, which is to say, at a level of “holy crap, something has gone very wrong here, in particular if society at large is OK with this.”
One’s the evolution of rhetoric and one’s an argument challenging the idea that food should be cheaper than dirt?
My great-grandmother is dead. But thanks for the reminder.
Oh Brad, you just can’t stand it when I get all non-sarcastic and preachy.
Oh that’s much better. Sorry, was I a bit excessive?
Am I the only one who thought DM was female?
Yes.
A poster under the name, Vermont Mom, posts here and calls DM, son.
You haven’t lived until your mother has outed your gender on your blog.
Sorry Joe. I guess I haven’t mentioned my wife or any impending prostate exams lately.
Fun fact: my wife has never commented on this site.
I would have to believe she *has* commented on the site, just not here *on* the site.
Sheez, you birds! What is it with the dead great-grannies & pending prostate pokeys around this burg?
My maternal great-granny never let her husband, my Irish great-granddad, forget that her people were forced to trek down the Trail of Tears, and that this trumped his people’s potato famine (despite the fact that both incidents happened well before either was born). We still have her recipe for hominy in our family, but I’ll forgo making anything that requires me to get the lye out…
My wife won’t post here either–she refers to my postings as, “bothering the neighbors.”
This would make a great thread. What do DM posters’s spouses/significant others think of this blog and those who post on it? Are there any two-poster couples out there? Do you comment on each other’s posts?
oops!
Considering this is Decatur, a comment about your wife doesn’t necessarily identify your gender, although I suppose a prostate reference is definitive.
Which is why I included it even though I’m too young for routine prostate exams.
Another sly clue!