Once upon a time

Yesterday I was a volunteer judge for a voluntary junior high school program called World Affairs Challenge. Until a week ago, I knew nothing of the small nonprofit, World Savvy, that created and runs it, but for the past few months, it's evidently been the center of attention of some 150 middle schoolers in the San Francisco Bay area. They had been tackling its 2011 topic: Feeding the World in the 21st Century, and this was the big day of prizes for presentations. A dozen groups of 8 -10 each got to display a table top shout-out solution for whatever problem they had chosen to examine: climate change changing farming, saving our seas, corn, gmo's, the meaning of organic, factory farming, fair trade food, bees. I loved the ingenuity of the high school group (I wasn't involved with the 160 high schoolers also assembled for presentations and prizes) making its case in the argument over corn fed or grass fed beef: under posters explaining what happens in the gut of a cow fed corn and a cow grazing grass, they put out a huge pile of forks, saying: "You vote every time you choose what you eat, so vote now by putting a fork either in the corn-fed bowl or the grass-fed bowl." B the time I got there, the grass-fed bowl was overflowing.

At 11- 14, the middle school children I was assigned to were the obvious target of the Justin Bieber/Hannah Montana puberty panderers, yet before the day began, they'd taken a 50-question world affairs quiz and answered such questions as: In July 2010 which county experienced flooding so devastating that it will likely set their development back almost 50 years? And: 2011 has seen a dramatic increase in food prices around the world. The last time prices were this high was in 1) 1987, b) 1995, c) 2001 or 4) 2008? Frankly, I who am up to the elbows in food and food facts had no idea.

Most importantly perhaps, the tweens got to act out a 10 minute skit to illustrate their problem solving skills, and were obliged to produce its bibliography to show they'd done research to define the problem and used facts to solve it. As the afternoon raced on, it was obvious they all knew something had gone very very wrong with the lifeline between the earth and the kitchen. They stood up in front of friends, family and strangers like me judging them to show problems of malnutrition and maladies stemming from malfeasance and misplaced priorities, then tell how to right this dangerous tilt in the food supply and save the food chain from breaking. Their common scenario was either a TV news show or a courtroom drama, and the unanimously common conclusion was that everybody should live happily ever after. The 4 ft high girl with big glasses and a big smile of metal covered teeth sticking out of her head-to-toe tuna fish costume, the 12-year-old twirling around as a honey bee, and the 4 ft tall boy who popped up as a gmo and started squirting "pesticides" on the taller boys standing there as cornstalks made me want to eat that delicious thought right up. I wanted to support in their idealism because that's where we really need sustainability. What else should you want when a young woman with teeth still in braces, dressed in a white lab coat as a doctor in Africa, says matter-of-factly on The Black and White Report: "Everybody knows climate change has made disastrous changes to the Earth and to farming."

Having done their homework, these kids had absolutely no doubt that Monsanto, corn-based fuel, factory farms, and high fructose corn syrup were weapons of mass destruction. They seemed to have unearthed a vital but ignored truth: when it comes to food, we are all totally dependent on the kindness of strangers-- and kindness, at least the last time I or they checked, is not in any corporate mission statement.

Maybe that's why they really took my heart in the special section called Collaborative Question, a problem solving exercise that put together 10 kids pulled from their own groups and mixed up in ad hoc ones. Each of these temporary groups had 30 minutes to decide which of four real food-based nonprofits deserved a hypothetical contribution of $10,000. I was to judge how well the members of one collaborated with each other and with reason to reach a conclusion. It only took my group ten minutes to bypass the Food Alliance which supports Fair Trade and The Hunger Project which serves 11 countries and choose a miniature group that gives gardens and nutrition training to HIV patients in Rwanda. They have in fact only pilot projects to build up immune systems and supply food that help as medication. "We chose this one because it will save people from dying of AIDS," they explained. "The others do good things but people can survive. We can help people not die."

That little tuna with bright braces didn't want her tuna parents in the sea to die. She didn't want the whales to die. The bumble bee didn't want to die. Nobody wanted people to die because their corn crop was taken away for car fuel or cattle feed. Nobody wanted chickens or cows or pigs to be mistreated before they died. Every kid in every group I judged displayed the natural compassion the Buddha and the Dalai Lama insist is inherent in all human beings. I was so exhilarated by the constant arising of that innate wish that everybody and everything live happily ever, I voted for it by giving all those kids high marks.

Then I came home, sadly haunted by that other insistent Buddhist teaching: impermanence, and down my high spirit came. Yesterday was only once upon a time. And it's gone already. How long til money talks loud enough that these kids no longer hear their heart? Is their hope for happily ever after as sustainable as they want our food supply to be? When will they stop feeling world savvy and start taking all their food for thought with a supersized grain of salt? That seems to be the world challenge we need to judge.

~Sandy Garson"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/

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