does the new silk burn?

greetings fellow earthlings! it has been a while, mostly due to the changing lifestyle that has accompanied my transition into chiang mai city. for the last week I have lived with three other ISDSI students in an eighth floor apartment overlooking chiang mai. we have redesigned it to optimize lounging ability and decorative inconsistencies. I was dropped off by my host family last weekend and of course within the first 2 hours of independence I was phoned by my host mom to check up on me no less than 3 times. it has been a tough transition for my mother of 1 month to let me go. I will be back to visit no doubt though.

I have had my hands full... agroecology class began this week. We have studied food systems and the colonialism of big agriculture thats rules many of our eating choices. The vertigal integration of these companies is just absurd. They own the hybrid crop seeds, the selective pesticides and herbicides, the irrigation systems, the transport systems, the processing, the marketing and the selling. Farmers are in a never ending cycle of high input chemicals and low yields are forced into dispair. There are tragic trends in farmer suicide rates skyrocketing around the world since the 'green' revolution a few decades ago. It comes down to an issue of scale, disconnecting the normal person with their food system. Thailand is in many ways following the industrialized agriculture ways of the west, except in some innovative places.

These are the places we are heading on Monday when our first field course begins. We will live in two villages for a week+ each, one upland and one lowland - in Mae Ta and at the UHDP (upland holistic development project) learning first hand about sustainable agriculture in Thailand. This will involve homestays, work in the rice fields, pig slaughtering, and who knows what else.

Although it has been refreshing to have some farang (thai for white people) time in the city, I am itching to get into the field. Sometimes it feels like I could be in any city in the world - there are malls and western restaraunts and 7-11's and the works here - sometimes that feeling doesn't sit well. With the monoculture of farms and land comes the monoculture of the mind!

Tidpbits:

1.)Mai (rising tone) mai (low tone) mai (falling tone) mai (high tone). In Thai this means "does the new silk burn?".

2.)There is a texas sized trash heap floating in the pacific ocean.... watch out.