Solving Big Problems

If you plug the words Susan's Change Purse into Google, our page on the Small Change Fund website is the first link you'll find.  The second link is for a website providing tools, drills and exercises to improve math literacy.  It will take you to a math problem -- question #118486 -- which reads as follows:

Susan's change purse contains quarters, dimes, and nickels. She has twice as many nickels as quarters and four more nickels than dimes. She has a total of $5.10. How many coins of each kind does Susan have in her purse?

I suffer from the mother of all math phobias.  Just reading this problem causes me to hyperventilate (unlike my sister Susan who was a wizard with numbers.)  It is an affliction for which I hold Eastwood at least partially responsible.  My advanced math teacher in grades 9 and 12 taught to the top five percent of the class and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves.  I depended entirely on intensive tutoring at exam time from my brilliant, unflappable friend Susan Bowen (now MacNeil) to get across the finish line every year.

So, this funny coincidence got me thinking about the complicated equation that prevents too many Eastwood students from accessing healthy food and from being ready to learn each morning.  At first glance, it is a problem that appears much too big to solve. We know it has something to do with the growing gap in family income and a bushel of social issues found in the Eastwood community and in every community across Canada.  Add the economics of food production and environmental sustainability to the mix and my head starts to spin.  Yet, even a remedial student like me can see that the problem of inequality holds within it solutions to the other problems.

Too often, this conclusion leads us to give up and to abandon our efforts -- large and small -- for a better world.  We have been taught that equality is a dream, the stuff of literature and poetry.  Inequality is a mathematical fact, an economic reality.  Why then are more equal societies like Japan and Sweden performing better by every measure than those with a wider spread between rich and poor citizens like Canada and the United States?

I've been reading The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.  Its authors offer convincing evidence that societies are bound to become more equal in the long run.  They say that the trend toward greater equality is "almost unstoppable," running like "a river of human progress:"

"It runs from the first constitutional limits on the 'divine' (and arbitrary) right of kings, and continues on through the slow development of democracy and the establishment of the principle of equality before the law.  It swells with the abolition of slavery and the extension of the franchise to include non-property-owners and women. It picks up pace with the development of free education, health services and systems of minimum income maintenance covering periods of unemployment and sickness.

It runs on to include legislation to protect the rights of employees and tenants, and legislation to prevent racial discrimination. It includes the decline of forms of class deference. The abolition of capital and corporal punishment is also part of it. So too is the growing agitation for greater equality of opportunity -- regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and religion ... all are manifestations of growing equality."

Through our work on Susan's Change Purse, we're stepping into this river with the confidence that comes from knowing it bends toward justice and its flow depends on us.  We expect dams, rapids, eddies and more.  But luckily, my high school friend and math tutor Susan Bowen MacNeil grew up to be a hospital nutritionist.  With her help and yours too, the complicated equation at the core of Eastwood's food access issue can be reduced to a few simpler ones within our collective power to solve.  Starting with the small math problem on the algebra homework help website.  When you've figured it out, will you please share the answer with me?

PS:  University of Toronto's Jordan Peterson talks about The Spirit Level and related issues in this 10-minute video.  A time-saving alternative to reading the book.  Also, we've started a Facebook fan page for Susan's Change Purse.  Signal your support for this work by becoming a fan today.

The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Philip Larkin

After a long winter's nap, this first post of a new season is more about Susan than her change purse and less about food than sustenance. In Susan's memory, we planted a lilac tree last fall in the front garden of our family house in Lakefield, Ontario. It bloomed in the first weeks of May and its fragrant blossoms are slowly giving way to a mass of green leaves. Still young, a fragile beauty in the middle of a mature garden, this tree is bringing comfort in these days leading up to Susan's birthday on May 29th. In the grief of greenness, we begin afresh, afresh, afresh ...

Food Rules for the Rest of Us

More food for thought for Susan's Change Purse.  Here's a recent article from Yes! Magazine (February 2010) by Berit Anderson, an editorial intern.

I admit it. When it comes to food, I am spoiled rotten. I grew up on a diet of produce plucked from my mother’s garden, eggs I gathered from our henhouse in a wicker basket lined with straw, steaks carved from the cow that once spent its days trimming the neighbor’s field, and more fresh fruit than I knew what to do with. That all changed when I moved into the real world, became an unpaid intern and was forced to find my own means of sustenance at the grocery store. Despite the sexy brown sheen of the free-range antibiotic-free egg, I simply couldn’t afford to spend $5 on twelve of them.

So when Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, visited Bainbridge Island to promote his new book, Food Rules, I was a bit nonplussed by his message: “Eat real food, not too much, mostly vegetables." Personally I found Pollan’s mantra at once obvious and too simplistic. I was fairly certain I’d gotten the same advice from my grandmother recently, which did nothing to change the price of eggs.

Still, the message is a valuable one. At times I take for granted the knowledge and awareness that comes with having a grandmother so hip to the value of real food. Not everyone is so lucky. This was driven home when I overheard a pair of high school girls discussing the validity of Michael Pollan’s suggestion that they need not eat each meal with the express purpose of stuffing themselves.

“I’ve got to try that,” one commented enthusiastically.

These girls are a perfect example of what makes Pollan’s work so influential. It is brilliant in its simplicity. Pollan has taken an expansively complicated political topic (the role of big agriculture in American food theology) and broken it down to an unprecedented level of accessibility that doesn’t force anyone to point fingers. “Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.” “Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.” “You are what you eat, but you are also what what you eat eats.”

Pollan is also a persuasive and engaging speaker, full of interesting facts and dry wit. Faced with a crowd of rapt Bainbridge liberals holding wine glasses, he first taunts them with Twinkies and chocolate cereal from the local Safeway, then launches into a detailed history of Big Agriculture’s role in the bastardization of American food theology. By the end of the evening, his audience is so enthralled with his account of "nutritionism," the fallacy that the way to good health is the consumption of certain buzzworthy nutrients, that Pollan is the recipient of a standing ovation.

Still, this group of enthusiastic local produce consumers is not the audience who most needs to hear his message. And Pollan knows it. In an effort to spread the benefits of real food beyond the well-to-do, he is selling Food Rules, a simplistic guide for healthy eating, for a mere $5 on Amazon (other retailers, $11).

While keeping his price low is a good step, it is only the first in spreading awareness about the value of real food. What I didn’t ask, and should have, is what kind of educational outreach Pollan has undertaken outside of liberal, food-secure communities like Bainbridge Island.

After all, if two Bainbridge Island girls don’t understand the importance of eating real food, in moderation, how many young people living in the inner-city do? How many youth in small, rural towns without easy, affordable access to fresh produce do? What about those who live in neighborhoods rife with fast-food joints? Those whose household incomes make eating in these joints the easiest, most economically viable option for overworked parents?

Healthy food is the foundation of social justice, says Will Allen. And he knows, because he grows a lot of both.

Food Rules certainly serves as a helpful tool in this fight, but it is just the beginning. We must continue to educate others and ourselves about the role that income and race play in the American corporate food saga.

Most importantly, we must educate children about real food from an early, formative age. They, in turn, will share their newfound knowledge at home, affecting household food consumption choices.

There are growing movements in this direction. Farm to School programs, which bring fresh, healthy, real food from local farms to school cafeterias are becoming more and more prevalent. College campuses across the country are choosing to take part in the Real Food Challenge, committing to obtaining an increased percentage of cafeteria food from local and socially just sources. Environmentally geared independent and charter secondary schools are popping up across the country. More and more farmers markets are accepting food stamps, making fresh produce more accessible than ever to those who qualify for federal assistance programs.

As I look ahead, to my future beyond Yes! Magazine, I see myself working toward this goal of increased understanding of food, environment, and health in communities across the United States. Meanwhile, I look forward to a day when I can once again afford the alluringly smooth brown of the free-range, antibiotic-free egg.

Ready for the Revolution

On Thursday, I dropped in on Eastwood's principal Nancy Strobel for an hour.  This was our first opportunity to talk in person about Susan's Change Purse and the Eastwood Food Project since the idea was hatched. 

Our conversation began with the school's immediate need for granola bars.  Nancy and her staff have discovered that the bars are an easy, inexpensive way to deliver a hit of nutrition every morning to anyone who might need one.  Before long, we were talking about meal vouchers -- the variance between what they can afford and what they need.  By the end of our discussion, we were thinking together about ways to engage student leaders.  We agreed that their leadership retreat in June would be the right place and time to invite them into the conversation.

So, the first call on the coins and dollars in Susan's Change Purse is for a case of granola bars -- to be delivered monthly.  At last count, we had $1,220 in the purse with several pledges of more in hand.  Our family contribution is not included in this amount.  We're waiting to see what the mix of activities might be by the end of this first year and how much money is needed.  Minimally, we'll match what the community has contributed and top up our initial gift every year.  In time, we hope that Eastwood's students and staff will play a more direct role in determining how the money in the purse is managed and spent.  But today, we're focused on getting our first case of (low-fat, high fibre) granola bars to the school for March 2010.

As for change on a bigger scale, I was inspired by British chef Jamie Oliver speech at the annual TED conference this week.  He is one of the 2010 TED Prize winners.  TED is a small 25-year old nonprofit interested in social innovation or what it calls "ideas worth spreading."  It hosts annual conferences in Long Beach and Oxford bringing together fascinating thinker-doers from around the world.  They are invited to give the talk of their lives -- in no more than 18 minutes.  Annually, a $100,000 prize is awarded to three exceptional individuals for their "one wish to change the world."

Jamie Oliver's wish is to transform the way we feed ourselves and our children.  He's taking aim at childhood obesity with his Food Revolution.  Listen to his winning TED Talk by clicking here.  Then think about contributing to Susan's Change Purse to start the revolution in one school and one neighbourhood -- and for one generation of students -- with one case of granola bars.

The Stop

Susan's Change Purse has been inspired by The Stop, a community food justice centre in Toronto.  Now that's our kind of food bank!  I'm in Belfast in Northern Ireland today, thinking about how far we've travelled since the Great Famine of 1844.  Not far enough.

Do All That You Can

"Do all that you can with what you have for as long as you can."  Open Susan's Change Purse and we find this message waiting for us there.  An invitation to take stock of our resources and to be resourceful with them.  A promise to persevere.  The possibility of a silver lining.

Herons in Winter in the Frozen Marsh

All winter
two blue herons
hunkered in the frozen marsh,
like two columns of blue smoke.

What they ate
I can't imagine,
unless it was the small laces
of snow that settled

in the ruckus of the cattails,
or the glazed windows of ice
under the tired
pitchforks of their feet —

so the answer is
they ate nothing,
and nothing good could come of that.
They were mired in nature, and starving.

Still, every morning
they shrugged the rime from their shoulders,
and all day they
stood to attention

in the stubbled desolation.
I was filled with admiration,
sympathy,
and, of course, empathy.

It called for a miracle.
Finally the marsh softened,
and their wings cranked open
revealing the old blue light,

so that I thought: how could this possibly be
the blunt, dark finish?
First one, then the other, vanished
into the ditches and upheavals.

All spring, I watched the rising blue-green grass,
above its gleaming and substantial shadows,
toss in the breeze,
like wings.

Mary Oliver

Listening to Barbara Kingsolver

"We have dealt to today's kids the statistical hand of a shorter life expectancy than their parents, which would be us, the ones taking care of them … Eating has become the boring act of poking the thing in our mouths, with no feeling for any other stage in the process.  It's a pretty obvious consequence that one should care little about the product.  Then I ponder the question of why we eat so much bad food on purpose, this is my best guess: alimentary alienation.  We can't feel how or why it hurts.  We're dying for an antidote."

-- from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2008)

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for.  And the most you can do is live inside that hope.  Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.  What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness.  Enough to eat, enough to go around.  The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed.  That’s about it.  Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides."

-- from Animal Dreams (1990)

The Eastwood Food Project is one ingredient in the antidote.  Susan's Change Purse lives inside the hope for elementary kindness.

Why I Just Ate a Pop Tart

I just ate a Pop Tart.  198 calories and 55 grams of fat.  It tasted exactly as I remembered.  Sickeningly sweet.  Burn-the-roof-of-your-mouth-off hot.  Artificial.  A little like cardboard.  My sister Judith and I occasionally ate Pop Tarts for breakfast -- or instead of breakfast -- when we were teenagers.  Susan was always better organized than we were and made herself a proper sit-down meal.  If my mother knew then what we know now about the connection between learning and nutrition, she never would have permitted them in the house. No doubt she discouraged us from making this choice, but who was listening? 

I'm old enough now to know better, but I ate the Pop Tart anyway to figure out why they're still on the grocery store shelves.  After 40 years, what's the appeal?  I also wanted to spend a few minutes in the shoes of an Eastwood student who might make this choice over a healthier one.  Afterall, Susan's Change Purse is primarily about getting young minds going first thing in the morning with the fuel that fires learning.

What struck me about this unpretentious little "toaster pastry" was the speed at which it lands in your stomach and gives you a hit of energy.  Nothing that is that easy to prepare, goes down that quickly or costs so little can be good for you.

The healthy eaters at the Mayo Clinic advise that a good breakfast consists of:

• Whole grains. Options include whole-grain rolls, bagels, hot or cold whole-grain cereals, low-fat bran muffins, crackers, or melba toast.
• Low-fat protein. Options include hard-boiled eggs, peanut butter, lean slices of meat and poultry, or fish, such as water-packed tuna or slices of salmon.
• Low-fat dairy. Options include skim milk, low-fat yogurt and low-fat cheeses, such as cottage and natural cheeses.
• Fruits and vegetables. Options include fresh fruits and vegetables or 100 percent juice beverages without added sugar.

Whtat everyone needs is a mix of complex carbohydrates, fiber, protein and a small amount of fat that to get a full feeling that lasts for hours, they tell us.  But what I remember from my teenage years is that sleep matters more than food.  We were always looking for something fast, easy and inexpensive.  I guess I still am.

What do you eat in the morning -- or make your kids eat -- when on the run?  I wonder what they serve in the Eastwood cafeteria for breakfast these days?  (The lunch spread back in the '70s was hardly comparable to the salad bar at Whole Foods!)

Small Change

With the advent of the debit card, it's surprising that we still exchange coins and cash let alone hold on to them in wallets and change purses.  The introduction of loonies and toonies has only increased the need for piggy banks, trays on dressers, and cannisters to collect the remnants of our daily transactions in the marketplace.

My husband John buys two newspapers each morning at the corner store.  He usually throws a little less than $3 in change into a bowl in the hallway upon his return.  We keep it there for those days when we need change for a mad dash to the bus or subway.  One year we gathered up every jar and stash of coins in our house and took them down to the coin counting machine at our neighbourhood Loblaws.  We were shocked to discover how much we had "saved" over time.  If only we had put it in the bank, we would have experienced the miracle of compound interest -- or so our old Eastwood classmate and The Wealthy Barber Dave Chilton counsels.

When I remember my maternal grandfather Bill Jones, I think of pennies, dimes and quarters carefully rolled with brown paper and put under the Christmas tree for his five grandchildren.  A silver dollar too.  On our birthdays, there would be a five dollar bill in a card.  If you were lucky, you'd find coins stuffed between the cushions of a chair or couch at my grandparents' house.  The rule was "finders keepers, losers weepers."

Bill was one of ten children raised on a farm near Marmora just east of Peterborough.  He came of age during the Great Depression.  To explain how poor he was growing up, he'd tell us (many times over) that he only went to school every tenth day -- when it was his turn to wear his family's one pair of boots.  We knew that he was exaggerating but there was a whiff of truth to his story.

Like many of Eastwood's current students, my grandparents were the children of immigrants.  We knew that our family could trace its roots back to the Welsh and Irish immigrants who were among the last to arrive in the first big wave of newcomers.  The good farmland in southwestern Ontario had been taken by that time, leaving the rougher terrain for the latecomers.  Not long ago, I asked one of my mother's cousins what we harvested from the fields surrounding the old Jones homestead.  "Rocks," he replied with a sigh followed by a broad smile.

My sisters and I come from a family, community and country that has historically counted its pennies.  We've watched those pennies turn into dollars with time, discipline, patience, hard work and good humour.  This is why we're excited about opening Susan's Change Purse to make small investments in one high school's response to a food access problem.  It might turn into something big -- big in its impact on Eastwood students where they live, learn and lead.  And in its impact on us -- a generation that continues to benefit and learn from the resourcefulness of previous ones.

Where do you keep your small change?  How do you usually spend it?

PS:  Yes, that is a photo of one of Susan's change purses.

The Work of Winter

In late November, two months after Susan's memorial service in Peterborough, we gathered for a second service in Kitchener-Waterloo -- in the place she thought of as home.

Susan's Change Purse and The Eastwood Food Project were introduced to 90 friends and family members that day.  Everyone was invited to reach into their pockets and throw their loose change into the purse. $515.85 was donated along with promises of time and skills to guide the growth of the purse and the project.

Just before Christmas, both were introduced to the world through a new online grassroots grant-making community called the Small Change Fund.  The fund gives us the capacity to invite many more people to contribute small amounts of money in the $5 - $20 range and to give of themselves to The Eastwood Food Project.

Environmentalists Mary McGrath from Kitchener and Ruth Richardson from Toronto are the Small Change Fund's co-founders.  They believe people like us know how to figure out and fix community problems.  They believe we can make change without a lot of money or exhaustive research.  They believe we want to help each other.  They've made it very simple for us to prove them right.

Take a look.  Click here for a quick overview of the Eastwood Food Project.  Make a donation with your credit card.  In an instant, a charitable tax receipt lands in your e-mail inbox.  The entire transaction takes less than five minutes.

With the Small Change Fund, Ruth and Mary are creating space for social change to take root in communities like ours across Canada and around the world.  They are wizards with new media and technology, but they are master gardeners at heart.  They understand how things grow in the real world: slowly, unpredictably and often imperceptibly.  We do too.  This is why we're so excited, and grateful for the opportunity, to be part of their new initiative.

The Eastwood Food Project is a handful of very small but potent seeds that were planted in fertile southwestern Ontario soil just before the first snowfall last year.  But if we're going to see any green shoots this spring, there is work to do over the winter: connecting with students, staff and others to learn more about the issues, imagine and plan first steps, divvy up tasks, locate the necessary tools -- and increase the size of Susan's Change Purse, of course!

Trees in winter, we're told, experience their greatest root growth.  Seeds lie dormant in winter awaiting the right conditions for germination.  It is a season of intense creativity even though everything appears dark, bleak and barren on the surface.  It is also the riskiest time in the lifecycle of a plant.  The work of winter, therefore, is to keep the hope within robust seeds alive long enough for them to become viable seedlings.

Are you a hopeful gardener?  Has anything about this project captured your imagination?  What would you like to contribute during its first winter?  Send us a note at susanschangepurse[at]gmail.com if you're ready to roll up your sleeves and dig in.