Debating the Pro’s and Con’s of Legalizing Medicinal Marijuana in Class

Directions:

1. Search through the following articles. Look for facts, opinions, and claims that will support your team’s side of the argument.

2. Create an opening argument (3 minutes), a rebuttal (2 minutes), and a closing statement (1 minute) for your team’s side of the argument.

3. Present your pieces in front of the class.

Short History of Marijuana Laws- Drug War Rant .com

MarijuanAmerica- Rolling Stone Article

Just Say Now- Rolling Stone Article

Marijuana Use For Medicinal Purpose- Debatabase

Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization- Drug Enforcement Administration

History Of Education Research: How Have New York State Regents Exams Influenced Pedagogy In The Last Two Centuries?

New York State Regents Exam History

Contrary to what I believed as a graduate of a small suburban school in New York where I took about 15 Regents Exams in at least 5 separate disciplines over the course of 4 years, the New York Regents exams are not a new-fangled torture device introduced in the last century like the College Board’s SAT: Scholastic Aptitude Test. No, the New York State Regents was first administered in 1878 (Center on Education Policy 1) and have evolved into New York’s most widely used exit test for secondary schools and “the basis for the curricula, initiating a cycle of curriculum development and testing that was cohesively intertwined in a yearly process of teaching and assessment” (Johnson 2).

The roots of this test are situated in a few different policies and bureaucratic bodies:

Morrill Act: In the words of Brad Lightcap: The Morrill Act of 1862 was also known as the Land Grant College Act. It was a major boost to higher education in America. The grant was originally set up to establish institutions is each state that would educate people in agriculture, home economics, mechanical arts, and other professions that were practical at the time. The land-grant act was introduced by a congressman from Vermont named Justin Smith Morrill. He envisioned the financing of agricultural and mechanical education. He wanted to assure that education would be available to those in all social classes.  There were several of these grants, but the first passed in 1862. This bill was signed by Abraham Lincoln on July 2. This gave each state 30,000 acres of public land for each Senator and Representative. These numbers were based on the census of 1860. The land was then to be sold and the money from the sale of the land was to be put in an endowment fund which would provide support for the colleges in each of the states.

The University of the State of New York:

Today it is, a section of the New York State Education Department that “visits and inspects” the following…

• More than 7,000 public and private elementary and secondary schools;
• 248 public and private colleges and universities;
• 251 proprietary (for-profit) schools;
• Nearly 7,000 libraries including the New York State Library;
• 750 museums;
• The State Archives;
• Vocational rehabilitation and other services for adults with disabilities;
• Special education services for pre-school and school-age children and teenagers;
• A School for the Blind;
• A School for the Deaf;
• 25 public broadcasting facilities, including seven public television stations;
• More than 750,000 professionals practicing in 48 licensed professions, including, for example, pharmacy, architecture, accounting, and nursing; and
• 240,000 certified public school teachers, counselors, and administrators.

 

How Has The Test Been Working?

In the past 133 years, the NYS Regents Exam has gotten a face lift each and every year, but there are a few issues and characteristics that are constantly brought up for discussion.

Who has traditionally made the tests?

Teachers from upstate and the most successful schools in the state are asked to attend test production conferences in Albany where they are paid to draft questions and participate in discussions on test improvements. Only 5-6 percent of teachers are represented in test production (Johnson).

Why have the test?

-Accountability: Rising  public interest in testing and other political pressures led many states and  localities to begin publishing scores in the early 1970s, after decades of  secrecy. By now, many do so as a matter of course and often conviction.  State and local school agencies also increasingly turned to tests in efforts  to improve instruction. The favored method was to institute “account-  ability” schemes, often based on minimum competency tests.

-Universal Academic Curricula: In 1984 Commisional Gordon Ambach set up something called the “Action Plan” where schools would write up a “Comprehensive Assessment Report (CAR) that listed information about the schools’ data on enrollment, attendance, dropout rates, and student performance results on the basic comprehensive exams,” (Johnson 8) which essentially provided the local and state governments with their first measures of efficiency.

What should be tested?

When the Regents Exams were conceived there was a lot of excitement and a spirit of experimentation which overtook the New York State Examinations Board. Using our 21st century imaginations, pretend there is no such thing as the SAT, GRE, MCAT, GMAT, etc. The Regents Board had control over many of the New York exit examinations that would be administered to students who aspired to be doctors, lawyers, and other specialized experts. In 1925, Regents high school exams were offered in 68 different subjects in specialty courses such as art, architecture, electricity, structural design, and more (Johnson). In the 2000′s there are still many different tests students could take in math, science, foreign language, social studies, and English, but they’re only required to pass five with a score of 65 or over to attain their regents level diploma.

Is it fair that districts in New York receive funding based on their Regents testing scores?

With the exception of a few states, school funding can be summed up as follows: “High schools in the United States are locally funded so wealthier areas vote tax dollars to their schools and the poor cannot,” (Johnson 3) making it impossible for all schools to be adequately set up to give students the tools they need to succeed on exit tests like the NYS Regents.

Why are the overt correlations between wealth and Regents success not addressed by the state?

In 2001, the Supreme Court of New York found the New york legislature guilty of misalocating funds in a way that prevented school districts from reaching the high standards set by the Regents testing board. Governor George Pataki defended the state’s educational testing board against these claims in an appeal in the appellate court and won. Again the case went to trial and the State was told it must provide a cost based system that could adequately supply schools with materials to prep them for tests. The state has ignored this order (Johnson).

What’s The Public Pulse on the Exam?

Kamourii tells us how he feels about the regents. Warning, this video contains explicit, adolescent, and real language:

 

Pushes Towards Alternatives

Since the 1960′s, by which time the supreme court had established that parents had the right to choose their child’s education (Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary) and that states could use buses to transport children to parochial schools (Emerson v. Board of Education), Alternative public schools were first making their appearance in the U.S. (Conley 22-23) and with them groundbreaking theories on assessment were being put into practice. Only since 1995 have select alternative schools in New York been given the go-ahead to nix the Regents.

The Consortium

“In 1995 New York State’s Commissioner of Education, Thomas Sobol, granted the Consortium schools a waiver from the state’s Regents exams” (Foote) which essentially allowed these schools to use alternative assessments that can be shown to colleges.

Listen To A Story From 2010 On NPR: “State Literature” by Margo Adler

 

Questions For Further Research:

1. What is testing? What does testing do? What is some of the psych and ethics behind testing? Survival of the fittest? What is assessment?

2.Why should students be tested? Dewey?

3. Were/ Are students getting enough preparation? How is this quantified?

4. What can assessment become? What other exit tests exist out there that could potentially be implemented in NY?

 

Sources:

Conley, Brenda Edgerton. Alternative Schools: a Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002. Print.

Folts, James D. “History of the University of the State of New York and the State Education Department 1784-1996.” ERIC. 1996. Web. Online Database

Foote, Martha. “Performance-Based Assessment.” The National Center for Fair & Open Testing | FairTest. Fair Test. Web. July 2011. <http://fairtest.org/performance-based-assessment>. Website

Hillocks, George. The Testing Trap: How State Writing Assessments Control Learning. New York: Teachers College, 2002. Print.

Johnson, Carol. History of New York State Regents Exams. Tech. Web. <http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:Jyl3-WUV6KEJ:web.njit.edu/~cjohnson/research/pprs/history.regents.pdf+carol+siri+johnson+regents+test&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjvQ0sl0EBeyY7kdHufeja5vMFmZ9b7FZVDN-p-Z2OE3Al1mPwOcsubnTvr1mWrxk_W6N9k8vWn00eE2zu36l2-OjSWkEBmXuOBmtuRzBYvn6tvYtOqNbEp3zyRWBJstykNG8_B&sig=AHIEtbT4LtaGKTv2iXfkKhnH6FvvyiEsXA>.

Kutz, Eleanor, and Hephzibah Roskelly. An Unquiet Pedagogy: Transforming Practice in the English Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1991. Print.

NY State Profile- New York Regents Examinations. Publication. Center on Education Policy, 2010. Web.

Consuming Sufism in the 21st Century: A study of Rumi as the Iranian Bard

At this point of my teaching program, I feel kind of like a Persian Pinnocchio doll. All I want to do is be a real teacher! I’m learning and mimicking the basic elements of what it means to be a professionally certified teacher. As I do my clumsy clack clacking through the halls of academia,  I often contemplate how I can integrate the best parts of my self as well as the best parts of my students in the classroom while learning Shakespeare, which is like one of the most ultimate challenges. And the other day it hit me!

Just as Shakespeare is referred to as one of the greatest forces in literature, Rumi is a writer whose works are constantly exhumed, reworked, and repackaged to suit the times. And just as Shakespeare is attached to Elizabethan culture, Rumi is the foundation of a culture that still exists today, called Sufism.

What better way to teach hairy, deep British literature other than in conjunction with the clear, yet mystical writings of a 13th century poet that I go gaga for?

As a second generation Persian woman, there are a select few things I’ve become absolutely sure of about my heritage and the language I’ve been brought up with… But ONE thing, the absolute only thing I’m sure of is this: No matter how many Persian valley girls from LA (also referred to on many occasions as Tehrangeles due to the thriving population of kabob-eating, accent wielding Iranian immigrants) or intelligent-yet-prone-to-adopt-Gladys-Spiegelman’s-Jewish-American-Princess-accent Persian girls from Long Island butcher and maim Persian with their merciless American-born tongues, it is doubtless that there is poetry ingrained in every syllable of the Persian language. It is also clear in 2011 that this poetry lives on through the works of Sufi poets such as Jalaluddin Rumi. Now bear with me as I make a strange yet relevant set of connections.

What is Sufism?

To begin with, we could have a more formal definition:

SUFISM is one of the most dynamic and interesting dimensions of Islamic religious and cultural expression. It is an umbrella term for a variety of  philosophical, social, and literary phenomena occurring within the Islamic  world. In its narrowest sense, the term “Sufism” refers to a number of schools of Islamic mystical philosophy and theology, to the phenomenon of religious orders and guilds (tariqdt) that have exerted considerable influence over the development of Islamic politics and society, and to the varied expressions of popular piety and devotion to shrines found throughout the Islamic world.Sufism is often seen as the spiritual muse behind much of pre-modern verse in the Islamic world, the idiom of much of popular Islamic piety, the primary social arena open to women’s religious participation, and a major force in the conversion of people to Islam in Africa and Asia. The Sufi orders served as educational institutions that fostered not only the religious sciences but also music and decorative arts. Their leaders sometimes functioned as a challenge to the power of the juridic and theological establishment. In modem times (as at other periods in history), the Sufi orders have been praised for their capacity to
serve as instruments of religious reform at the same time as they have been vilified for a lack of respect for Islamic law and for fostering ignorance and superstition in order to maintain control over the community. (Elias, 595)

I would argue/add that Sufism was conceived as Islamic mysticism, and from a place of deep Islamic contemplation, yet it evolved into schools of thought that advocated finding connections to the divine through coexistence in every sense of the word, not Islamic tenets. As I understand it from familial anecdotes and oral tradition, sufis were beholden to “religious” laws unto themselves just because their journey to find G-d in everything around them was so personal. Not just anyone can consider themselves a sufi, but it’s definitely easy to fall in love with the works of great sufi poets like Rumi, Hafiz, Attar, Jami, Saadi, Sanai, Yunus Emry, Shabistari, Ansari, Rabi’a, Abil Kheir, Sultan Bahu, Ibn ‘Arabi, Baba Kuhi, Mansur al-Hallaj, Amir Khosrow, Moinuddin Hasan Chishti, Hazret-i Uftade, and so many more.

There are so many deeper ways to explain Sufism, but for our purposes here, I’ll only mention the parts of it that have remained most visible over the years. From what I know of Iranian culture, there is a commonly used term for practicers of Sufism and that term is “Dervish.” These dervishes can be spotted immediately as they have no home, wander from place to place, seek constant revelry through their search for the divine, and beg to maintain a living. They are (or at least were) an excepted part of Iranian culture. The following clip is from my favorite movie about sufis called “Bab’Aziz – The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul,” and it shows what a Dervish gathering might look like.

*Note: Sufism is much more far reaching than the bounds of modern day Iran. It has of course touched the whole world, but in it’s most primary phases, Sufi thought was prevalent within the bounds of the ancient Persian Empire. For this post, I speak through what I know of my own Iranian roots.

Who was/is Rumi?

Most simply, Jelaluddin Rumi was a man born in what is now Afghanistan in 1207. His father was a prestigious holy man and scholar that was consulted by sultans and Islamic followers. Rumi (named as such after he moved to the Rum region in what is now Turkey) followed in his fathers footsteps with his own philosophies and written works that have become a timeless source of contemplation for many over the years. His work evolves and still it changes as I’ll show you below. The following is an example of a widely read translation (Coleman Barks) of Rumi’s work and interestingly enough, this piece showed up on one of my state examinations to become a teacher called the LAST:

An Invisible Bee

Look how desire has changed in you,

how light and colorless it is,

with the world growing new marvels

because of your changing.

Your soul has become an invisible bee.

We don’t see it working,

but there’s the full honeycomb.

Your body’s height, six feet or so,

but your soul rises through nine levels of sky.

A barrel corked with earth

and a raw wooden spile

keeps the oldest vineyard’s wine inside.

When I see you,

it is not so much your physical form,

but the company of two riders,

your pure-fire devotion and your love

for the one who teaches you.

Then the sun and moon on foot behind those.

There are infinite ways to read this poem, and in that there is the essence of Sufi beauty.

How does the work of Rumi and Sufi poets exist in the 21st century?

800 years later, the tradition of sufi poets is still going strong in all parts of society. Of course, I’ll be looking at mostly American lenses on sufi work, but it’s easy enough to see how many cultures bleed into works of sufi poetry and music. The following clip is of Salman Rushdie reading a piece of Amir Khosrow’s work at an opening of a South Eastern Museum near Emory University:

The academics exhume Sufi pieces and culture all of the time.

People make these cheesy homages to well-known foundations of Sufi Poetry like Rumi:

In Iran, Rumi’s poetry was an all pervasive force that worked its way into more than just literary, religious, or philosophical gatherings. Many Iranian artists use the words of Rumi’s poems or the ideas ingrained in his work to create music. The artists featured in the video below are a father and son duo named Shahram and Hafiz Nazeri. Shahram Nazeri is one of the greatest Iranian composers for the past three decades. In the last year or two his work with his son to transform Rumi’s sufi influence into new music to honor Iran’s history and culture. You can watch the clip below to learn more about the political nature of their work.

Here is an example of a symphony piece from their concert series:

 

One last quirky thing that I’ve bumped into numerous times over the last year is a blogosphere that loves mentionaing Rumi. People write blogs where they try to transmute Rumi’s work into a force in their lives:

http://rumidays.blogspot.com/

http://rumi-poetry.blogspot.com/-*

Getting Students To Engage With Rumi

Teaching and learning Shakespeare is painful. Shakespeare’s brilliance works for and against his works in the realm of academia because so much of it is entrenched in deep literary themes, motifs, and commentary on society. I believe that teaching Rumi will share a similar obstacle to teaching Shakespeare, because reading these writers today requires leaving the 21st Century mindset and body to experience the contexts, culture, and life around the texts… But in my opinion, the journey back in time, the journey to let go of the self, and the ability to fill a goody bag with tools, perspectives, and insights are what lie at the foundation of being literate in the literary discipline. As the poet Sonja Sanchez says it, you gotta “shake your skin loose” to understand a larger, richer picture if you want to be a critic, consumer, or producer of literature.

Citations

Elias, Jamal. “Introduction: Sufism.” Iranian Studies 31 (1998): 595-613. Print.

The Next Realm: Teaching

Heretofore I claim this space for my journey to teach English to the middle school and high school demographic of NYC!

 

Seeking Suburban Beauty!

I think the The Arcade Fire did something seriously cool when they developed their Grammy-Award-Winning album The Suburbs. They took their own experiences with their suburban lives in Houston, TX and collaborated on a message for all to hear. Their album got me to thinking about my own life and what it’s like to be a ex-collegiate residing in a sleepy suburb.

What are the suburbs? How was Long Island created to be what it is today? What has it looked like in the past? What’s the economic picture life? Diversity? Politics? Who are our representatives? Who’s running the Board of Ed? Are there any cool things to do? What kinds of poetry resources exist here? What kind of opportunities do I see for Long Island and my home town? What do we got going for us (qualified teachers, youth desperate for something cool to do, and $)

They say the suburbs are an obsolete framework for living… The following clip from a documentary entitle “The End of Suburbia” is just the beginning of an argument made claiming that Suburban life is unsustainable:

So What?

That’s a great question. I grew up in a seriously dead suburb. Life as a kid, teen, young adult, etc. was droll and predictable. Now that I’ve moved back with all of my progressive university perspectives, I understand the function suburban life serves, but I can’t condone the comfort and the waste that I see around me, soooooo…

 

A Call to action for long island

Why are we still living in these obsolete towns? Where’s the poetry on Long Island? Who speaks for us?

Why are we sleeping?

I am going to begin with a new challenge to hold myself accountable for my own consciousness in this Suburb where I live. I am going to seek out the answers to my questions and follow the trail of beauty and truth to the poetry that must exist.

The Magnetic Fields:

“There’ll be time enough for sleeping when we’re dead/ You will have a velvet pillow for your head/ But tonight I think I’d rather just go dancing/ There’ll be time enough for sleeping when we’re dead, my love”

An old Persian poet named Rumi once said:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

DON’T GO BACK TO SLEEP.

 

This Post was written in loving memory of my beloved Gym Teacher, Bowling Coach, Badminton Coach, and Wise Mentor Ms. Catherine Dodd. You were a seriously decent person who taught the kids of my sleepy suburb to be whacky and active no matter what and that we’re all winners no matter where we’re from.

These are a few of my favorite things… 2010 in New York

This is going to be a lot of info at once, but I promise (especially if you’re a passionate New Yorker), this post will be absolutely worth the read!

Jonsi & Alex of Sigur Rós Perform at the White Lights Festival

Click HERE

This is a stream from a performance at Lincoln Center (in NY of course) in November called the White Lights Festival… Yet again Jónsi and Alex, two former members of the band Sigur Rós, overwhelm me with how amazing things could be done and be called music!

For more information on the performance and the critical analysis of check out Pitchfork’s Article

New York Non-Profits Setting Invaluable Precedents For Education

America Scores: A recent favorite of mine is America Scores in New York… They accept students from under-served communities in the NYC area and offer them a new way of looking at education. “America SCORES New York offers one of the most unusual and successful approaches to youth development and literacy training for at-risk students: poetry writing-soccer teams.”

Can you believe this?! And it doubtlessly works at getting students actively engaged with language, building positive networks with their peers, and ultimately developing skills and talents that typically aren’t addressed by a public school education.

This is a product of empowering education:

Behind The Book: I began helping Behind the Book with their program about two months ago. What they do is this: Find an author who has written an age appropriate book that will translate well into lesson plans and writing exercises that are alternately administered by teachers and book authors. Then the students are given a variety of creative exercises to get their writer’s/illustrator’s juices flowing. Behind the Book staff, authors, and teachers look over these exercises, and a book/published work of some kind is developed collectively.

Let me tell you, I could not begin to understand the incredible obstacles elementary school teachers have to overcome in order to get students to be engaged and competent readers until I began lending a helpful hand to author Susanna Pitzer (author of Not Afraid of Dogs and coolest lady ever!) and a teacher at a school (both to be left unnamed) in Brooklyn.  The students that I’ve met are mostly the children of immigrants (like me) who are extremely talkative, comical, and blessedly talented. And Behind the Book provides an exciting push to get them writing and interested in the minutiae of story development.

Adopt-A-Farmbox: I have only utter adoration for this project. Adopt-A-Farmbox is a project spearheaded by an eco-consciously inclined building organization called Baker Design + Build. The Adopt-A-Farmbox crew erects farmboxes (a stand alone box made out of recycled materials that contains soil and the foundation for healthy plant growing) in and around schools and community buildings that express interest in promoting gardening activities.

Among some of the services provided by the crew are (Adapted from the Adopt-A-Farmbox Kickstarter Page):

” • Design and construction of 100% recycled farmboxes to uniquely fit the spaces available at each site

• Provision of organic soil and seeds to accompany the farmboxes

• Consultant services by an organic farmer throughout the growing season

• Onsite project co-coordinator to assist throughout the growing season

• Guidelines for schools to help teachers incorporate the farming projects into their classroom curriculum • Eight hours nutrition and health education workshops in schools for school faculty

• Four hours nutrition and cooking workshops in schools for students

• Four hours nutrition/health and cooking workshops for members of community organizations/businesses”

What else is necessary for success in developing a simple, healthy green space that will nourish and provide for a community for years?

Here’s a cool video about their program:

Louder Arts: I learned about this organization from an incredible professor/poet I studied with at UMass Amherst named Martín Espada (Who recently received the USA Simon Fellowship- Raise the roof!). Louder Arts is a multifaceted organization that endlessly advocates for poetry writing and reading at all ages and from all identities. They coordinate slams, readings at Bar 13, writing workshops, poetry showcases, historical poetry events, and so so much more that I could not even begin to do them justice with a measly blog post. They show an unfading interest in getting people at all ages to have poetry be a regular inspiration in their lives.

If you want to be kept updated on the things that Louder Arts is up to, I’ve found it’s easiest to keep eyes on their Facebook Page.

Bands That Care

Yeasayer, Lykke Li, & The Polyphonic Spree Join With Invisible Children & La Blogotheque for a Documentary in Uganda

The National Raises an Astounding Amount of Money for AIDS Awareness

And I could go on and on and on… But that’s enough for today.

Analysis of Sugar Products in the Body

“The average American, as of 2005, consumes about 22  to 30 teaspoons of sugar which translates roughly into about 350 to 475 added calories to the American diet.” What does this do? Where does it go? Why  does it matter?

The Chemical Structure of Glucose

This is not a simple subject to understand, because sugar feeds all kinds of different cells and so it serves infinite purposes in our bodies. Glucose (its chemical structure is depicted above) is the primary source of fuel for cells in our body. It is the simplest form of sugar that is contained in fruits and honey. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, molecules of starch, the major energy-reserve carbohydrate of plants, consist of thousands of glucose units. What this means is, the more complex you get with your sugars and carbohydrates, the more time and energy your body will need to break down unruly sugars and carbohydrates into glucose. Unless you are an active person whose body is constantly sucking nutrients out of food, you want to be saving your energy for other metabolic functions.

Here’s a link to a funny video about the Olympic Swimmer, Michael Phelps’ eating habits:

Video Link

An athlete like Michael Phelps works to tighten up his metabolism so that it could focus on expending energy on one main activity: swimming. He can consume 12,ooo calories a day (over 4x the average caloric intake of males in the U.S.) because he will use all of it to swim efficiently. His body is a machine that’s been trained and fine-tuned to deal with high quantities of energy. If you feel the need to eat as much or swim as much as Mr. Phelps, good for you, but metabolizing on that scale isn’t a joke.

What do our bodies do with sugar?

The major thing that our body does with glucose is use it for the process called cellular respiration, where one of my favorite cell organelles, the mitochondria go about producing ATP. ATP is the basic unit of energy storage in our cells.  The overall process of oxidizing glucose to carbon dioxide can produce about 38 molecules of ATP from a single molecule of glucose. Glucose, fructose and galactose are three monosaccharide. While they are barely indistinguishable from one another, they are different.

Chemical Structures of 3 Sugar Types

According to an article entitled “Sugar Overload” from a magazine called Nutrition Action Healthletter, there was a study (Stanhope, The University of California: Davis) cited about the differences in how bodies accept fructose vs. glucose:

“32  men and women gained the same weight (roughly three pounds) after 10 weeks whether they had drank beverages sweetened with fructose or glucose. But there were differences. The fructose eaters (Especially men) gained more deep abdominal- or visceral- fat than the glucose eaters. That’s critical because visceral fat is linked to a higher risk of heart disease and diabetes. In contrast the glucose eaters gained more subcutaneous at which is just below the skin and less likely to raise the risk of diabetes and heart disease.”

As a part of the same study, the scientists found that the fructose drinkers experienced a drop in sensitivity to insulin which is linked to a higher risk of heart disease and diabetes.

The American Heart Association won’t openly admit that too much sugar intake will lead to diabetes, but they do say that sugar leads to obesity, which “increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.”

Why do we want it?

From a biological standpoint, “sugar is a substance that releases opioids and dopamine; thus it might be expected to have addictive potential.” (Solomon) This means that we will feel good after eating sugar products and want to sustain that feeling by continuing to eat more and more sugar products that will consistently create the same after effects.

From an evolutionary perspective, “Scientists believe that the preference humans seem to have for sweets is probably a long-cultivated, protective mechanism against poisonous substances, since many poisons taste better while many safe, nutritious foods, like fruit, taste sweet.” Simply put though, we’ve been conditioned to want sweet things, because sugar derivatives are in just about every single processed product (things in fancy boxes, bottles, bags, cans that we purchase).

Sugars go by many names, and come in many forms, but here is the cast of sugars that plays into our daily intake of sugar products:

Corn Sweeteners/ High fructose corn syrup (HFC’s)- The cheapest way to make something sweet

Glucose syrup, Dextrose, Honey, Lactose, Maltose, Maple Syrup, Invert sugar, Cane sugar, Molasses, Malt syrup, Maltodextrin, Sorghum, Agave Syrup

How is sugar made?

“The method of transforming plant or raw sugar (from cane or beets) into table sugar is called refinement, which involves washing, crystallizaing, clarifying and filtering raw sugar to remove plant matter and molasses to create the final product, white sugar.”

What Do Our Bodies Do With Sugar?

The major thing that our body does with glucose is use it for the process called cellular respiration, where one of my favorite cell organelles, the mitochondria go about producing ATP. ATP is the basic unit of energy storage in our cells.  The overall process of oxidizing glucose to carbon dioxide can produce about 38 molecules of ATP from a single molecule of glucose.

Sources Used

Professor Ryan H. Lustig on Obesity and Sugar

Sharon Salomon “EN Answers Your Most Pressing Questions About Sugar” Environmental Nutrition, March 2010 Volume 33 Number 3

Macrobiotic Guide’s article on Understanding the Energetics of Food-

About.com’s Article on Macrobiotic Diets – All about keeping a simple diet and maintaining health based on principles on yin and yang

Dr. Vincent Bellonzi on Sugar: Bellonzi works at the Austin Wellness Clinic in Texas… Take these videos with a grain of salt.

The Molecular Machinery of Keilin’s Respiratory Chain

Cellular Respiration

Carbohydrates

The Hiatus Comes To An End

Dearly Beloved Readers,

I’m sorry I’ve completely deserted this page… This is where I’ve been:

Planting Poetry in Communities

I had to work on my thesis project, so I could get out of this Intellectual Gangster’s Paradise, but that’s coming to a swift end.

-Sharon

The Republic of Poetry

Who: The members of the Pioneer Valley

What: Read Poetry

Where: The Gardens next to Durfee Conservatory on UMass’ Campus ::Directions::

The Gardens

When: Friday, 4/30/2010 from 6:30 pm to 10:00 pm

Why: Because poetry bridges the gap between us. Reading poetry is an act of claiming words and concepts while sharing the essence of who you are through your choice of words.

How: Like this:

Anthony Barone, Prize Poet

These are readers from the Republic of Poetry.

Mirisa Livingstar, Poetic Being

We came together and read our own written work. We came together and read poetry that inspired us.

Little Old Me, Sharon Alvandi

So What? We now know each other a little bit better and share a memory of a time where we gave one another something precious at no cost other than love and respect.

The Republic of Poetry

For Chile

by Martín Espada

 In the republic  			of poetry, a train full of  			poets  rolls south in  			the rain as plum trees  			rock and horses kick  			the air, and village bands  parade down the  			aisle with trumpets,  			with bowler hats, followed by the  			president  of the republic, shaking every  			hand. 

 In the republic  			of poetry, monks print  			verses about the night on boxes of  			monastery chocolate, kitchens  in  			restaurants  use odes for  			recipes from eel to  			artichoke, and poets eat for  			free. 

 In the republic  			of poetry, poets read to the  			baboons at the zoo, and  			all the primates, poets and baboons  			alike, scream for joy. 

 In the republic  			of poetry,  poets rent a  			helicopter to bombard the  			national palace with poems on  			bookmarks, and everyone in  			the courtyard rushes to grab a  			poem  fluttering from  			the sky,  blinded by  			weeping. 

 In the republic  			of poetry,  the guard at the  			airport will not allow  			you to leave the country until you declaim  			a poem for her and she says  Ah! Beautiful.

A Further Look Into Earthfoods Cafe's Collective Business Model

Earthfoods in Relation to my Project

I was accepted into the Earthfoods collective in Spring 2009. After 3 semesters of working there, I’ve found this business to be a dynamic place where talented individuals meet to make dreams derived from the scholarly atmosphere of UMass Amherst come true.

For this project Earthfoods has served as a catalyst through which I brought my poetry related events to life. Earthfoods has also been one of my most dear communities.

Earthlings in Fall 2009

Earthfoods is its Own Specific Beast

As I said in an earlier post, Earthfoods was established in 1976 during a unique time in UMass’ and the U.S.’s history when the term “power to the people” was not only a pop culture reference, but a popular slogan for scholars as well. Earthfoods Café is often perceived as a time warp or a place where people can come to remember a time when demonstrations protesting administrative decisions were the norm, health codes were barely to nonexistent, and capitalism was explicitly grappled with in a visible way. The café space definitely emits a bit of a hip vibe. From the compostable dishware overflowing out of compost bins to the motley attire of the Earthfoods crew to the colorful disorder of fliers, photos, and manifestos ever-present on the walls to the clamorous music (usually world or experimental jazz) oozing out of the doorway into the halls to so many other irregularities, Earthfoods Café constitutes as more of a spiritual experience than an eatery.

I believe that this is so because the Earthfoods experience is rooted in intricate history and business practices. In order to understand the business practices of Earthfoods Café, we have to examine the reasons why it came into being and upon what principles it was formed.

I compiled research for this part of the project by rummaging through preserved documents that are housed in UMass Amherst’s Center for Student Businesses and the W.E.B. Du Bois Library archives. I sadly found that there weren’t too many historical documents left from the past 33 years, but I found a few interesting memos that I will summarize below.

In one of the founding documents, dated November 20th, 1976 (7 months after Earthfoods was opened on UMass Amherst’s campus), Christo Boyd (one of the original founders of Earthfoods, and a part of the collective) wrote a memo that defined Earthfoods:

“We are a non-profit, vegetarian collective of UMass students dedicated to serving Peasant cuisine to the UMass community. We intend to educate, feed and interact with that community so as to pass on the awareness of solidarity on the absolute grassroots level: eating. If you are what you eat then we are intending on to create a well-fed, well-nourished clientele.”

A few crucial things we might want to take a closer look into are the following terms: “non-profit” “collective” “solidarity” and “grassroots” which are catchy buzz-words used in specialized subsets of society.

Non-Profit Organization- This word is self-explanatory. A non-profit business makes sure that there is no surplus profits made by the end of a financial term. In conventional business models (Ex: Starbucks Coffee) profits acquired over time are used to bolster the growth and development of a business, but only through the planning of owners and shareholders, which are not always the workers.

Today Earthfoods does make a slight profit off of the major entrees and desserts that it serves, but this profit is used as a way to cover the cost of opening and closing at the beginnings and ends of the semester.

Collective Identity/Business- A collective was the first group that took the initiative to form Earthfoods. The collective was a casual group of friends who developed a concern for eating well as students on a college campus. They put their ideas into practice, and to this day, collective identity plays a large part in Earthfoods’ actions.

Collective Identity of a Social Movement- There are many definitions for collectives floating around out there on the Internet, in scholarly papers, and in journals. This one that I’ve chosen resonates with my own experience as an Earthfoods Collective member.

“Participants’ shared sense of the movement as a collective actor—as a dynamic force for change— that they identify with and are inspired to support in their own actions. Elaborated more fully, a collective identity develops within an imagined world (e. g. , Wolford In Press)—or, to use another term, a figured world (Holland et al. 1998)—which is a realm of interpretation and action generated by the participants of a movement through their shared activities and commitments that imagines the terrain of struggle, the powers of opponents, and the possibilities of a changed world” (Holland).

What this dense and confusing piece of text is trying to say by gluing together a few different theories, is  that a collective experience often provides an alternative reality experience for everyone involved. Because everyone begins to pour efforts into one project, the project begins to take on a personality that’s reflective of every collective member’s ideals and beliefs. This is unusual because companies and business enterprises usually try to survey popular culture and reproduce it so that their clientele feels comfortable in their spaces.

From another article entitled in the Encyclopedia of Small Businesses, I gleaned the following definition of collectives:

“A collective is comprised of a group of individuals pooling together their intellectual and financial resources in order to operate a business enterprise for their mutual benefit. Frequently, members have no specific job but rather contribute to projects if they have free time or specific strengths to add to a job. Members of the collective share equally in any monies left over after paying bills” (Hillstrom).

I like this definition because it makes it clear that everyone working in a collective has a stake in what’s happening at all times.

"Solidarnosc" Polish Slogan

Solidarity- Social theorist Émile Durkheim coined the concept “Social Solidarity” in 1893 when musing about religion in his book The Division of Labor in Society. He says that feelings of solidarity are encouraged “when individuals strongly identify with a collectivity” (Darity).

This word has many connotations. It’s been attached to mostly worker’s movements: For example: When the communist party in Poland was undergoing major economic upheaval in the 1980′s, Solidarity trade unions  began developing as a way for workers to have more input in their enterprises (Teague). Another example of solidarity in history occurred in the 1960′s and 70′s when Pablo Neruda wrote poetry in solidarity with the Miner’s of Chile who were poorly treated by the government at the time.

What Boyd might have wanted the readers of this memo to take away is the idea that the formation of this business wouldn’t just bring wealth to the co-managers that ran Earthfoods, but that Earthfoods would be a movement to include and inform the community around it.

Amherst a Bit Beyond Sunrise

Grassroots- This word basically means “at its most basic and foundational level” and is used mostly to talk about communities in a politicized way. A grassroots community is one that exists outside of or despite the existence of bureaucratic governing bodies that choose to divide communities based on economic and political characteristics.

Now that we’ve defined these words to some degree, we can see that Earthfoods was planted into the UMass community with some powerful fertilizing concepts.

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In the Earthfoods handbook (an ever-changing document that keeps record of changes in the business’ constitution) Earthfoods’ mission statement is:

“To provide high quality vegetarian food at an inexpensive price to the UMASS community. Co-managers of Earthfoods take part in running an ecologically, economically, and socially conscious business based on the Principles of Co-operative Management.”

This is what Earthfoods collective members try to do each year in a nut shell, but the statement barely covers all of the bases because if you look at the statement made by Boyd above, Earthfoods is not only supposed to be a cooperatively-run business, but it should also adhere to the ideas of collectivism as it was written in the founding documents.

"Cooperation" by Stephanie Luke

Taking a closer look at the concept of Cooperative Businesses:

“A cooperative in its simplest sense is formed when individuals organize together around a common, usually economic, goal… A cooperative is autonomous and independent from other organizations. If it enters into a working relationship with another organization, the arrangement must ‘ensure the democratic control’ of members and maintain the independence of the organization” (Hilstrom). In addition to building an organization around a common goal, cooperatives must adhere to a few basic principles that are rooted in a British worker’s movement from 1844, called the Rochdale Principles.

The Rochdale Principles are made up a few significant pieces: 1) Membership is open and voluntary for anyone who wishes to be a part of the cooperative and  willing to accept the responsibilities of being a cooperative member. 2) Membership processes are anti-discriminatory.  3) There is a board of directors, made up of cooperative members, that is decided on democratically. This board is held accountable by all of the cooperative members.  4) All business decisions are voted on democratically (a majority voting system) and each member has one vote.

In addition to the Rochdale Principles, there are a few more general practices that cooperatives usually adhere to. Cooperatives should provide members and volunteers with adequate training and “provide information on the benefits of cooperation to the public” (Hillstrom).

Earthfoods Today

As you can see from above, Earthfoods Café isn’t either a collective or a cooperative, it’s both. The way Earthfoods has reconciled the two ideologies is by saying that it is collectively managed and a “co-op in spirit.”

When Earthfoods opened it definitely resembled a cooperative style business more truly than it does today. In 1976 (until I’m not sure when) the collective members that started Earthfoods took on roles as cooperative members, but also opened up membership to anyone in the UMass/Amherst community who wanted to volunteer in exchange for food or apply for membership in order to receive a very impressive salary of $2.30 per hour. All of the business meetings were open to the public and decisions were voted on democratically.

Today, Earthfoods’ membership is capped at 23 members that must be full-time UMass Amherst students. All business meetings are closed unless individuals arrange with a committee or a co-manager to attend. Co-managers are paid a salary that they decide is appropriate for the amount of work they’ve done on a week-to-week basis. Collectivism has definitely played a larger role in Earthfoods’ identity of late. All decisions having to do with business practices and Earthfoods’ administrative structures have to be voted on through consensus (also called Consensus Decision-Making) as opposed to abiding by the will of a majority. This means that each and every one of the 23 Earthlings must vote in favor of a proposal to change any part of the business. If one Earthling votes to block a proposal, it is taken off the table.

Model for Consensus Decision-Making

The cool thing about consensus decision-making is that it encourages co-managers to put personal biases aside and to think about what decisions would work best for the business. Voting through consensus also teaches co-managers to think in terms of cooperation, not competition. Competition is often times what results from a superficial democratic process. People begin to believe their own ideas are the most important or the most pertinent in every situation, so they might try to sell their ideas as opposed to listen and search for the best idea. Consensus creates a system of checks-and-balances in an interpersonal as well as intrapersonal (relationship within the self) within decision-making processes.

Collectivism also plays out in Earthfoods’ business model in the committee structure where Earthlings are put in charge of certain tasks after they are elected to a committee.

Not only does Earthfoods Café serve peasant food (rice, beans, and kale), but Earthlings also serve complex dishes from all over the world (curries, sushi, cacciatore, burgers, etc.) at prices that undercut those of the surrounding cafeterias on campus.

Another thing that is wildly different from the earlier years is that Earthfoods’ collective no longer owns its own means of production. This means that at some point Earthfoods’ collective members owned or rented the spaces where they cook and serve food on campus. Now the university owns these spaces and has an umbrella group, called the Center for Student Businesses, overseeing all of the operations of student-run businesses on campus. Today, Earthfoods’ business is operated as more of an educational venture than an independent business.

Local Heroes

Students Working at UMass' Extension Farm

Even with all of the shifts in power and business practices, Earthlings consistently try to stay true to the original mission by supporting other local business ventures, maintaining business practices that encourage community building, and thinking about the sustainability of the business on environmental+social+economic levels .

In the winter, Earthfoods Café purchases all of its kale, carrots, onions, and a few other crops from UMass Amherst’s student-run extension farm. The student extension farm offers Campus Supported Agriculture Shares for summer and fall… If you are interested in purchasing a share, please contact us through
email: studentfarm.enterprise@gmail.com.

Earthfoods Café also maintains a relationship with CISA- Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, which is a local organization that catalogues sustainably interested and involved businesses in the U.S. who understand the importance of supporting local agricultural ventures.

Co-Managing a Collectively Run Business as a Student

All-Staff Facilitator: Mari Nazarro

As a co-manager at a collectively run student business, I often think to myself:

WHAT DO WE THINK WE ARE DOING?!

The business that I help run is incredibly complex. It’s ever-changing due to the intense turnover rate as students come and go with graduation dates. And it’s usually incredibly difficult to think in terms of a collective, seeing as I was brought up in a hyper-capitalistic, competitive country where time=money, and conversations that cater to the emotion are conventionally considered impractical and unprofessional.

We strive to build our business through the creation of Collective Wisdom, defined by William Darity as “the notion that the totality of knowledge, experience, and skills possessed by the members of a group, whether large or small, typically exceeds that of any individual in the group, and that the members acting in concert are thus capable of judgments, problem-solving, and decision-making that will lead to better outcomes than one could expect of any one of them acting alone.” This idea that “two heads are better than one” is incorporated into Earthfoods’ business structure through and through. We learn everything through insightful conversations with one another.

A Business Meeting

Sources Used:

Collier Hillstrom, Laurie, and Kevin Hillstrom. “Encyclopedia of Small Businesses.” Cooperatives. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2002. 247-49. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web.

Darity, William A. “Collective Wisdom.” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. 9-10. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web.

Darity, William A. “Solidarity.” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 2nd ed. Vol. 8. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. 23-25. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web.

Holland, Dorothy, Gretchen Fox, and Vinci Daro. “Social Movements and Collective Identity: A Decentered, Dialogic View.” Anthropological Quarterly 81.1 (2008): 95-126. JSTOR. Web.

Teague, Elizabeth. “Solidarity Movement.” Encyclopedia of Russian History. Vol. 4. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. 1422. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web.