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For those who care about such things, I'll be reccing fics today through Sunday, April 27 at calufrax. No, they will not all be porn. I don't know why anyone would think I'd do that.

That Book Meme

Because many of my clients are closed for the Patriot's Day holiday, I have a little time to goof off today, and so I can participate in the meme for which columbina just tagged me:

Grab the nearest book, open to page 123, find the fifth sentence. Then post the next three sentences. Tag five people and post a comment.

Like columbina, I have to cheat a little, because the nearest book to me is the phonebook, and page 123 is not likely to be all that interesting. So I'm picking the first book I noticed upon walking into the living room, which is Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Local food is a handshake deal in a community gathering place. It involves farmers with first names, who show up week after week. It means an open-door policy on the fields, where neighborhood buyers are welcome to come have a look, and pick their food from the vine.

I'm definitely a fan of local food -- I belong to a CSA, and I grow my own vegetables in the summer -- and I really enjoyed Kingsolver's book. It's a nice antidote to Michael Pollan, actually; I liked The Omnivore's Dilemma, but it was damned depressing. Kingsolver's writing style is friendlier and funnier, and not that we don't need people like Pollan to point out the significant problems with agribusiness and federal agricultural policy, but we also need people to talk about the little things we average people can do to improve the food we eat and promote sustainable farming. (I still can't imagine how Kingsolver managed to process tons, literally tons, of tomatoes herself, though. It's all I can do to deal with the 5lbs. or so we get per week when the tomatoes really get going.)

Tagged, if they would like to participate: bruyere_75, elliptic_eye, haineux, mmancuso, and profrobert.