Tommy James is a rock god. The man wrote "Crimson and Clover,” "My Baby Does the Hanky Panky,” "Mony Mony" and "I Think We're Alone Now" among many, many others. His chops are too righteous for words. His stuff was so good, a 16 year-old named Debbie Gibson launched her entire career of touring shopping malls in the 80s covering "I Think We're Alone Now." She toured malls - only shopping malls - because that’s where people were. People used to gather in civic places to be human together but by the 1980s, that main places of gathering were temples of commerce at which the main activity was shopping. People did other things in malls besides shopping; they talked with each other when they walked from shop to shop or sat by the recycled-water replica of the village well. The physical and motivational context of human gathering at the mall, however, is capitalist commerce.
That’s a thirty, almost forty year-old example of human connections being funneled into places in which they can be commodified and capitalized. The internet and its many terminals are the latest. The smart phone has corralled socializing, shopping, sex, banking, entertainment, working, navigation, and all manner of other activities onto small screen of very expensive devices that we pay to have, keep with us at all time and then pay for services on the device. The whole time our smartphones are tracking and monitoring our movements and actions, primary (but not exclusive) to be able to better able to sell us things. As the digital mediates an ever- increasing percentage of our daily lives, so, too, are our lives ever more commodified.
So it is important that we identify, celebrate, and amplify those places of non- commodified interactions in our lives. In subtle and not so subtle ways, the two local food projects conducted as part of this research staked out food as a context that opened up non- commodified spaces. The sweet potatoes that the students grew transformed the school cafeteria
from a space that was completely dominated by commodity food to a space that was also a context for human connection and the sharing of labor and love. Student food grower, Brad, articulated the how he experienced the meal underscored the school as a community: “I just think it’s a very, it's a great thing for kids to enjoy what they have been doing, and for other people to enjoy what their school's been doing, not somebody you don't know.”
I reiterate here a few points I’ve already discussed. The responsibility that students felt for passing on what they were learning and for acting to benefit their community were behaviors that inherently fostered community connections. The adults in the study, particularly Travis and Adrien from Extension and Lacey Fox from Child Nutrition all talked about how the student- grown food project had forged tighter connections between Bailey County agencies.
Student seed savers also talked about how much they valued the act of learning elder knowledge as an exercise in building a relationship with people. As Tina said: "I really enjoy hearing the stories from older people. I just, I just enjoy learning from people who just have that wisdom and just being able to gain knowledge.” Chris described how the context of our seed saving visits gave him greater access to the elders in his community than even his own family reunions. "I was able to actually talk to the older people instead of being surrounded by older people and them talking to them and not being able to talk to them and just actually hearing it and being able to talk back."
Mary, a student who joined the seed saving club in the fall, went so far as to describe seed saving as a way to improve relations between generations:
Say for example we went to an old person's house, an elderly person's house and we asked them a bunch of questions and asked them if we could plant the seeds and they say, "Oh that's so sweet." "Oh sure you can." And so she's gonna see us
as like people that want to help out and respect their elders. (Mary, interview, December 11, 2018)
And, finally, there was a theme of helping that ran through the data and is a fantastic example of a way to be with one another that doesn’t involve the exchange of money. Brad spoke about his motivation to help at the Sternhill Farm over the summer: “They need just more hands than I really enjoy going out and doing that and just helping people out.” In describing her motivation to grow food as part of the project, Hillary said: “what motivated me was just being able to work towards something to be able to serve in the cafeteria, to make cafeteria food more healthy and better for the students that goes to Highland High.” Finally, Ikard’s ideal scenario for agriculture in Bailey County was based on cooperation:
[I]f we all pitched in and worked a little bit on our own and our own, uh, our own crops and our own, uh, livestock than I think that we could work out a way where everybody has a role in growing for themselves and for others. (Ikard, interview, December 10, 2018)
Engaging in local food work tied both the students and adults closer to their community. This increased connection with those around them was neither ancillary nor inconsequential; the interpersonal joy and bonding was a result of cooperating. Cooperation in the local community presents a clear alternative to competition in a global economy; by extension, the local food projects of this study opened up a clear decolonial otherwise to the neoliberal manifestation of public education in U.S. in the early 21st century. Always stumblingly articulate, Larry summed it up nicely:
[I]n the beginning I regret thinking of this is just a small town like thing like, uh, but then now it's like, this is something that connects, you know, everything that
we have, this connects us and everything starts from a seed. (Larry, interview, December 19, 2018)