Brandymore Castle

With publication of Pollan's In Defense of Food, I think we are seeing the emergence of folklore into the mainstream. Most people think folklore is something they have very little in common with. It is old fashioned music or people dancing around in costumes they wore hundreds of years ago. People feel it has very little relation to their lives. They also believe that we live in a scientific, rational world and somehow folklore does not belong. There is also an association between myth, legend and folklore as meaning fraudulent, fantasy, lies. This is a problem of perception and mis-perception, which is not new. Shortly after becoming literate, the Greeks abandoned and ridiculed their own folklore, the "myths" we read about today. For a new perspective on what I call "folk knowledge" or what might be categorized as "folk culture" instead of folklore, since it is more correct and encompassing, we need only look to authors like Adrienne Mayor . Through l...

I am reading Michael Pollan’s latest book, In Defense of Food . I had just reached the end of his forward when I was struck by one of the closing paragraphs, which says that eaters have real choices now thanks to the revival of local farms and farmer’s markets, which make practical the availability of whole foods. I had to stop, the words echoing in my mind, because they were incredibly resonant with what myself and Tom Davenport are doing at farmfoody.org , reminding us that our health, the health of the land, the health of our food culture are inextricably linked. I continued my reading and came to the point where Pollan relates the story of dentist and amateur scientist Weston Price, who abandoned his practice to study the food culture and nutrition of various aboriginal peoples around the world, untouched by the Western diet. Price concluded the common denominator of health among these peoples was, as Pollan says “to eat a traditional diet consisting of fresh foods from animals and...

"It's very hard to make money selling whole food." says Michael Pollan in a talk given at the Free Library in Philadelphia on the 10th of January 2008 about his new book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto and available as video through C-SPAN BookTv . He explains whole foods are not as profitable as processed foods because the whole food cannot distinguish itself from other foods in the marketplace. There is nothing special about plain oats to make them cost more. By processing the oats and packaging them in a way that distinguishes them from ordinary oats, the profit is higher because people are willing to pay more for a unique product. Independent farmers face this problem every day, but there is a solution. An idea developed through centuries of French winemaking based on observations of the special characteristics bestowed on individual wines by geography. The term denoting this special characteristic, which no other wine could claim even if made from the s...

While looking for some tips on good writing, I found a page on how to make writing more concise by substituting awkward or redundant phrases, such as "after" for "after the conclusion of" or "near" for "in the vicinity of." I noticed "honest truth" was on the list. I could see why on its face this appears to be a redundancy. Taken literally, there should be no difference between the "honest truth" and the "truth" given there is only one truth. I do not believe this is a mere redundancy (unless used by habit in as a cliche) but an expression of mutual knowledge . If you've read Stephen Pinker's The Stuff of Thought , you will understand how important mutual knowledge can be in human affairs. When we say "honest truth" we are acknowledging there is a public truth, a conventional truth everyone must acknowledge, and a private truth we all know is reality. The "honest truth" is a warning to ev...

Tom Davenport, filmmaker, has released part one of his video Bodhidharma's Shoe: Zen Sesshin at Bodhi Mandala Monastery . Part one of a two part documentary on an American Zen retreat at Bodhi Mandala Monastery in New Mexico. A seven day intensive retreat is called a "Sesshin" which means to bring the heart/mind together. The experience of a sesshin is transformative and intense, but there are dangers -- both physical ones ( I ruined my hip, for example) as well as spiritual ones (like believing that the Zen Master is a saint or a god). Zazen of this intensity changes you and a lot of good flows out into the world from it (as long as you take yourself lightly and have a sense of humor). But requires that we (the sangha) all support each other. I doubt that anyone could do this alone. Tom Davenport, a old timer at Zen in America, who got a lot of help from his friends, tells the story of a novice's entry into zen, and says of the experience "...thinking back to th...

Although this is not a new topic to the members of various internet forums, the new inexpensive DSLRs introduced in the last year are bringing a significant number of lapsed film photographers into the DSLR marketplace. Many old OM-System shooters, who owned OM-1's and OM-2's back in the 1970s (Lucky you! I made do with the closest alternative for a small light weight camera, the classic Fujica ST-605 , which will always be close to my heart). There are a lot of young photographers who see the OM lenses sold on ebay and wonder what it's like to use the old manual focus, fix focus lenses. To use OM lenses on your E-System camera (E-510, E-410, E-1, E-3, E-330, E-300, E-500 as of this writing), I have posted a brief illustrated article on how to mount the adapter, where to get one and some hints using the OM lenses.

I have a suspicion the near 4:3 ratios of the traditional photographic print sizes (probably based on traditional canvas sizes, but I am unsure of this...it seems likely) emerged due to a concentration of photography on portraiture in its early days and that photography adapted the canvas sizes used in painting, which very likely emerged out of portraiture. I am not entirely sure of this, but it seems reasonable to assume the majority of traditional paintings, as painting emerged in the Renaissance as an important feature of Western art, were portraits at first. The landscape I assume is a later invention as nature began to be seen less of a threat to life and more as an enjoyable extension of human space. We have to remember that nature, i.e. the forest, was a terrifying place for our ancestors and only in the 19th century did the modern conceit of the 'pastoral' emerge. So I hazard that most paintings were portraits. I doubt many of the first patrons wanted paintings of the l...

Independent filmmaker Tom Davenport has been working on a film exploring the daily rituals of zen practice during a meditation retreat. The film contrasts a series of drawings about zen monastic life in Japan many years ago with images from current practice in the United States. He has posted drafts of his film in segments on YouTube. American Zen Part One American Zen Part Two American Zen Part Three American Zen Part Four Weaving the old drawings through the daily life of zen practice helps the uninitiated feel comfortable with the mysterious happenings depicted in the film. The depiction of a novice's entry into this mysterious world helps us feel secure entering it. Seeing the events and people depicted in the drawings match those before our eyes gives us a sense of continuity. Between the narration and the exotic but familiar scenes, the film goes far to dispel the mystery of zen practice and acquaint the viewer with the history and practice of zen in America. The internet ha...