We all have a haven. A place you can call your own. This digital island has been mine for years and I welcome you to it. I'm a highly driven crazy soul. I like to create, solve problems, and stay as effective as I can. Explore and enjoy all that is me.
I’ve been jumping (skydiving) now for 4 years. I am not as far in disciplines (roughly 160 jumps) due to the upheaval financially we’ve all experienced one way or another over the course but I still manage to learn and have fun. I fly with some great people at Skydive Carolina and when Lee and I decided to go up he took his new camera with him and we recorded it.
Here we are leaving at a little over 13,000ft to just have a fun sit-fly. I get to geek out and fail at some neat tricks but all in all it was a blast and I look forward to our next jump together.
With great fanfare and after a lot of fundraising Slow Food Charlotte accomplished the huge task of sending over 14 people to Turin Italy for Terra Madre 2008. As a part of the observer arm of the delegation we were there to experience something special and unique. Which if you are in to food, culture, and a wider world view should be experienced.
The real question upon return is how to best speak of the event. How to best capture, seal, and use as a foundation for our local conversations and action. I’ve found it difficult. Speaking with many of the delegates there are similarities of not having just one thing but a peppering of tens if not hundreds of little moments that remain indelible.
Picking up our passes and checking in with the US liaisons we were able to meet some of the other US delegation and see a plentiful and diverse group of peoples. The opening ceremonies was long yet brilliant.
Beginning with a procession of Sardinians showing off one of their rituals (impressive, daunting, and powerful) to follow was the marching of the flags. Many countries of the world were represented and as we later found out from Winona laDuke a hope that indegenious cultures will be able to fly their flags next session.
Passionate Speakers, We Listened in Awe
Speakers included those in Slow Food and beyond, Alice Waters introduced a video of Prince Charles, UN Asst. Secretary General Carlos Lopes spoke on behalf of Ban Ki-Moon, Vandana Shiva was passionate and fiery in her remarks, a student Sam Levin blew us away with his youth, determination, vibrance and step-taking, Carlo Petrini brought it all home in the poignant thoughts of our development and rich diversities.
We were awash in the power of the people.
I had chills so many times I thought my brain was going to fry out. I’m not sure everyones world view is ready to accept what is going on. The world is being dominated by those with power and we are constantly seeing large companies leverage that power into poor decisions; squeezing the bottom of the chain, selling consumers marketing and bad health, while replacing nature with man management which is leading us down a very bad road.
United States Delegation, 800+
America will always amaze me. We are a super culture, a mixing pot of everyone. Including the great diversification of the indigenous countries within our country. How often we forget our own brief history.
The meeting of the US delegation was huge and very long. I understand why Slow Food Nation was conceived. We have a lot to talk about. With over 300 million in our borders we have a lot of work to do to corral this great nation.
We heard from many great regional speakers (session notes from Robin):
Josh Viertel, President of SF USA
We cannot take out without putting back in. Our priorities: #1 The Youth, #2 Social Justice. We are a movement, not an organization.
Farmer Dominic
We feed the community, and the community feeds us.
The importance of teaching.
Green Mountain College Farm and Food Project
Initiated under three goals: #1 Food, #2 Minds, #3 Ideas
Community supported agriculture (CSA) in the classroom to the kitchen and dining.
Common goals with continued partnership and community building.
White Earth Land Recovery Project Winona laDuke, protecting our sacred wild rices, listening and talking to our relatives (the vegetation), cultural diversity is as important as bio-diversity, remember where we came from and how we got here, honor the history of food, and that we all have the right to own and eat food.
Kellen Vaughn Shelendewa, the crops are your children, learn from your elders, the ancestors are with us and watch us, the earth has been entrusted to us.
Brett Ramie, community inclusion cannot be done without elders, our world cycle is a non-linear progress and we must apply the knowledge of our elders before it is lost to us.
Ian Marvy, creating future eaters and teaching young people to farm.
Peace and refuge exists in the garden.
From seed to sale, helping the youth see potential in alternative markets.
Embrace the joy, understand the anger, and transform one to the other.
Chef Tony Miller, cook to farmer collaboration.
Let the food be the food, the star of the plate. Finish strong, show the youth what we need to continue. Keep the dollar in your yard, source locally whenever possible.
What Novice Farmers Need to Succeed
Access: land, info, market, cultural institutions, encouragement.
Land, liberty, sunshine, stamina. serveyourcountryfood.net
Inter-generational collaboration in activism Coalition of Immokalee workers, a 32 pound bucket of tomatoes gets $.45, the same as in 1978. Equating to $8-10,000 a year. 7 cases of slavery in the last decade. They have fought and won cases against large companies to pay more for their produce. Big companies can not keep applying this financial pressure downwards.
Strengthening Food Communities,Will & Erika Allen
Engage and inspire the community. The need to break down the social constructs that are oppressing people. Food justice, generations of justice. Look for the small projects to produce tremendous results, “Below the Grass”. Rich food for all folks.
Overcoming Cultural Divides with Smiles
Robin and I wanted to break through the cultural divides and meet people. We built a photo book, packing it with pictures of who we are and where we are from. Upon meeting someone new usually it involved the act of smiling and gesturing for a photograph.
I would take their picture and then we would approach showing them their picture. This then turned into an often funny trial and error of english, italian, french, hand signs, and laughter.
What really helped was showing our pictures.
Showing our city at night, Robin and her classroom, our farmers and local agriculture, our family.
Through this exchange we would learn who they were, where they were from, what they brought with them, and with many contact information for penning them later. Our parting gift to those we met was a simple photograph of Robin and myself surrounded by some of the pictures they had seen with a set of email and snail mail addresses so that we might keep in touch. We hope they do.
Classes, Lectures, the Public Speaks
There were so many things to learn and not enough time to learn them all. Between Salone de Gusto’s formidable tasting, pairing, and food explorations you had multiple tracks that you could run on in the Terra Madre sector. Climate change, soil protection, fair trade, bee colonies, getting to market, how to market, activist luncheons, youth meetups, and so much more.
We attended many which I’ll go in to in individual postings later, but would have loved to entertain more. Watching and being a participant with all these groups of people, each having a headset and a translator was just brilliant in being able to communicate across the gulf of language.
Do You Value Yourself? Do You Value the World?
In the end we all share this world and many of us are experiencing the same problems. How we face those problems, find solutions that are good, clean, and fair, will be a monumental challenge. If we don’t face it head on though it will get no easier later and if the damage is irreprable, then what.
I’ve said it before, I got into this movement for a hunt for quality. I fell in love with the chain of agriculture and now am in it for my future family. If we can adopt a greater outlook for ourselves and for those in our charge maybe there is hope yet.
Continued Thought, an Evolving Experience
More to come. We thank all of those who helped us achieve our goal and look forward to building further essays and pictorials that give light to what we learned. I end with a musical slideshow that encompasses some of the sights and similar musics heard during our time abroad.
“Why does one want to walk wings? Why force one’s body from a plane to make a parachute jump? Why should man want to fly at all? People often ask these questions. But what civilization was not founded on adventure, and how long could one exist without it? Some answer the attainment of knowledge. Some say wealth, or power, is sufficient cause. believe the risks I take are justified by the sheer love of the life I lead.” — Charles Lindbergh
I love it, wish I could do it more, wish I could amp up my abilities to a near competition level if I could. I don’t have time, and like everything time in equals mastery out so you have to work hard at it.
Moments to Perfection
For skydivers, unless they do tunnel time, we learn one (1) minute at a time. Makes you really think about how hard you need to execute, how well you need to plan, how rigorous you must perform to maximize your one minute in the air. Next time you are slacking over an hour think about what you could do in just one minute. Test yourself with your own boundaries and see if you can go farther. It’s one lesson I’m always taking to heart.
Achievements can happen in moments so try not to waste many.
An Excerpt, J101
The following is a little excerpt from my life. It takes place on my 101st jump where I take a Flip Minos around my neck and take some video after a high-pull (meaning to pull your chute directly at altitude out of the plane). I had a nice 8 minute journey back to earth and let my adrenaline speak for itself.
It’s not the best video, I’ll get better when I can mount it on my head (hah). For now though I think it speaks volumes and gives a sneak peak into the view I enjoy so much.
Jeff and I do a lot of video recording these days for our educational series on business owners using Facebook as well as an upcoming series on helping you take your business online in general. Through the development of all of this I’ve started becoming more and more familiar with the video lens and thought it a neat idea to try and capture some of the views of myself and topics I am interested in through video as I have in text for years.
I also received a Flip Minos for my birthday and have been using it all over the place in an effort to get comfortable with on the ground interviews and quick happenings around me.
My aim is to have fun and share some pieces of my world in yet another format.
While I can’t say last week was perfect; after getting horribly ill and rebounding with the same celerity I flew into action at [Skydive Carolina](http://skydivecarolina.com) on Thursday and enjoyed myself thoroughly in social skydiving activities.
Photography Video Montage
A Heat Wave to Remember
The heat was magnificent in its ability to melt us all. With a high reaching 103’ on Saturday (at least by my altimeters function), how we all lasted day after day is a real wonder. It did slow me down though I wasn’t readily willing to repack as quickly or even don my flight suits (hey I got a new free fly suit too!) since you turn into a human sprinkler if you did. We still managed to enjoy each others company with eager smiles.
A Coordinated Effort
The event coordinators really did amazing keeping everything running so smoothly. We even had an expected visit by the FAA (man those suits walk real upright), but the show went on with only mild delays.
One day we had two Casa’s, one Twin Otter, and a helicopter all in motion. James La Barrie really handled it tactically and no issues means he did a stupendous job.
Funny enough the only thing really squawked on was how Outback really screwed us on our meal plan serving us up some real airplane fare for the price of steaks. If that was the only beef (/sarcasm) then I’d say it was a success.
Do You Know Howie?
A profound shout goes out to our friend Howie. A man who would have rather been left be had his own fan club after him; you can many times hear, ‘Do you know Howie?’ shouted onboard a plane.
During our sunset tracking dive we put ourselves over some tricky terrain and the flank Howie was on was in the deep of it and not going to make it home. After a rough landing Howie sustained a few broken bones (tib/fib/fingers), and a fractured hip. Can you believe he called 911 for himself? What a guy!
The dropzone being what it is with the local family we were quite a buzz over our friend. From the latest intel we understand that he is doing the best he can and we send our well wishes and speedy recovery.
Rodriguez Family Reunion
Thus completes my, Pelargo Rodriguez, first year as a family member. We celebrated in style and brought on board a slew of new family after many jumps with initiates. As always Shaggy manned a deadly liquid cooled tequila machine which caused personal malfunctions everywhere, haha.
Welcome new brothers (and bumpy brothers), may your lives be long, your sombreros be shade casting, and your tequila glass cold.
Good Festival
If I heard right we’ll see these guys again next year under hopefully cooler early June circumstances. We met a lot of new people and got to hang with a lot of those we just don’t see enough of these days.
Always looking for new recruits to come jump with us so if you need the right motivation let me know!
around my neck and take some video after a high-pull (meaning to pull your chute directly at altitude out of the plane). I had a nice 8 minute journey back to earth and let my adrenaline speak for itself. 
