food deserts and Columbia, Mo.

--> As a Peace Corps Coverdell Fellow, I am expected to volunteer about 10 hours a week with a local nonprofit. I chose CCUA as my service partner because I wanted to learn more about growing veggies and growing awareness about food insecurity.

I first heard about food deserts last year when I was living in New York City. I was working at a youth development nonprofit in East Harlem and my coworker and roommate, Prospero Herrera, mentioned the term. He had studied urban planning and had spent a few years out in Oakland volunteering with an urban agriculture nonprofit.

Prospero told me that a food desert is a place that does not provide easy access to fresh, healthy and/or affordable food. It can be an inner-city neighborhood, a suburb or a very rural area. Food deserts exist because of uncoordinated city planning, poverty, structural inequalities, racism, lacking infrastructure, big box businesses, fast food chains, and sometimes, simply distance. They exist for complex and highly politicized reasons. And, the fallout of a food desert is complex as well. When people cannot easily access fresh food, they resort to fast food, which causes health problems like diabetes and high cholesterol. Essentially, living in a food desert long term can be harmful to your health. The USDA estimates that 23.5 million Americanslive in a food desert.

I’ve learned that eliminating food deserts takes a coordinated effort. A health conference I attended last March included a panel on improving communities. Paul Lopez, a city councilor from Denver’s third district, said his neighborhood really needed a grocery store, but faced quite a struggle in getting one. People in his community didn’t have a place nearbyto buy vegetables at a reasonable price, but they did have plenty of liquor stores and convenience stores filled with processed food. Lopez worked with a grocer for several months, and was finally able to convince the grocer to open a store in his district. It took intense pressure and a lot of effort to open that one store. Lopez’ anecdote illustrates the complexity of food deserts and the uphill battle people face in eradicating them.

When I moved to Columbia, I was surprised to find no markets or grocery stores downtown. In my neighborhood in Washington Heights, just north of Harlem in New York, I lived within half a block of several large grocery stores. But, in Columbia, I couldn’t find a single grocery store within walking or even biking distance.

Walk Score is a website that uses data to estimate how walkable and affordable various zip codes are. According to Walk Socre, Columbia is a car-dependent city. 

Walk Score's data ranks Columbia 26 out of 100 for walkability. In other words, most errands within this city require a car, and most areas are not bike friendly, either.

Those numbers are tough to see. But, if you look closely at the Walk Score map, you’ll see a small green dot in the middle of downtown Columbia. That’s indicative of a walk/bike-friendly location. In the nine months I’ve lived here, I’ve seen Lucky’s, a natural food market, establish itself just a few blocks from downtown Columbia. I’ve become involved with CCUA, an organization that not only grows fresh food for residents and delivers it to the doorstep of local food pantries and children’s organizations, but also teaches people how to grow food on their own. I imagine that green dot growing just a little wider every time a store like Lucky’s comes to town or an organization like CCUA takes root in a place that has been labeled ‘car dependent.’

I wanted to write about food deserts because I think that complex issues like this one can teach us a lot about our communities and what we might need to do to make them better.

CCUA is quietly addressing this issue, even though you won’t see this word listed anywhere in their literature. Yes, bringing healthy food to people is part of the answer and making that food accessible is certainly a big step in the right direction.

CCUA won’t put another grocery store in downtown Columbia. Only a grocer can do that. But they are addressing the issue by cutting down on the negative impact that food deserts have by teaching people how to grow gardens in those deserts. Urban agriculture empowers people to grow their own food, instead of relying on external systems that may disappoint them by being too far away, too expensive or too inaccessible. It’s a revolutionary idea, really. It’s an innovative solution to a complex problem and it’s making a difference.

Read some stories about how growing food is improving thelives of Columbia residents.

Advanced reporting: Summer 2014

This summer, I want to:

• strengthen my voice
• improve my ability to organize a narrative
• tell more compelling stories through sensory detail (aka: conduct stronger reporting)

I'd like to focus on:

• health-related stories
• Current topics: psychological consequences of sexual abuse
• Diversity in the student body at MU's medical school 
• One mother's ability to overcome grief
• Profiling a doctor who often diagnoses people with terminal cancer
• ...

I want to continue writing day-turn articles. I've worked as a reporter for one semester, and I know that I still have a lot to learn. Last semester, I learned about how to construct articles, interview and report. But, these skills are not instincts, yet. The motions are not fluid and my own writing voice feels awkward and constrained. I want to be able to sit down with a topic, identify the players, do the reporting, research and then put together a well-organized narrative.

My weaknesses (as I'm aware of them) include:

• story organization
• transitions
• integrating sensory detail
• moving into "uncomfortable" interview territory quickly
• nerves
• multi-tasking through a couple big stories at once

#journalism

the truth about you

part I

i am pulled to you
because of your refusal
to completely let me in

in you
i've found the opportunity to
laugh...cry...sulk...and swim into a vast ocean of emotional connection

your currents steer my tears
away from the shore
but i know i don't want to be on land anyway

your reticence reminds me
of my own fear; my own aloneness

at night, when i am tucked safely away from the world
with the blinds drawn and the covers pulled up

i remember
about being alone
the emotions and memories flare
then weaken and slowly subside into another dimension

part II

this solitute used to scare me
not in any superficial way
but the deep kind of way
the kind that creeps from the base of my core up into my heart
nesting there
waiting for a salve
that may never arrive

the years have weakened this naive panic
and replaced it with
.patience
..appreciation
...and joy
my own loneliness has softened into something a little less fierce

lesser
it still remains

part III

last year, when the leaves began to die
right before winter's birth

i met you at a bicycle rack

and i remembered the

first time i saw you
it was your eyes
that caught me
as i quickly scanned through facebook profiles
i stopped there in that pupil blackness
and saw a flicker
of recognition; or something else

your eyes reminded me of candlelight
and the way it dances around a wick the moment it's lit

in them
i saw sadness
hidden
just out of reach
of consciousness
and knowing

i stepped toward those eyes
knowing that your reticence, your aloneness
would keep me
returning

for another look

this entanglement of ours exudes a stubborn perseverance
something deeper than a look
a way of knowing

or even seeing

what i learned from my grandmother

The day my grandmother died, I laced up a pair of old running shoes and stepped outside to dig. Her death made my hands long for the earth. I dug around old weeds that had spent months rooting themselves deep into the soil. I dug around them and as the misty rain fell, I felt only calm and mud and sadness. My grandmother was a sad woman. She was always fun to be with, but just below the surface, she carried a great sadness. Even as a child, I felt it, though, I never did ask her about it. My grandfather fell off of a ladder and died suddenly. It seemed to me that after that day, she too, had fallen. And, I'm not sure she was ever able to stand again.

I still remember the feeling of the wet soil mixing with tears. I only cried a few times because I knew she wasn't suffering anymore and that made me happy. But, selfishly, I knew I wasn't ready to say goodbye to her. We had been lifelong penpals and I knew that habit would die hard. I still find myself reaching for postcards to send her when I'm out of town, and then pulling my hand back in surprise when I remember she's gone. She won't ever get another postcard.

Every spring, I remember the mud and the weeds and the rainy Easter morning that she died. I remember yanking at roots until I lost my balance and fell into the concrete. I remember the regret my grandmother felt when she realized she was dying, but hadn't done all the things she'd hoped because her life had somehow frozen and moved slower after my grandfather's death. I remember her because I want to learn from her. So, I joined the Peace Corps. I moved to New York. I went to grad school. And, when someone tells me that my time has come or when I come to realize it myself, I don't want that shadowed look to cross my eyes. I don't want to feel the regret that comes from knowing it's too late. I always want the soil to be in my fingernails and life to be growing nearby.