Cornelius Hall
27 October 2014
Mrs. Kybruz
Summary
The article starts off with giving me a view of how Mr.
Bittman feels. Though out the week, he
feeling tired but has a strong feeling of giddiness. He is preparing himself to talk in front of a
large crowd, he knows that they will be asking him intense type of questions.
But he starts to question himself, does he really want to do this or would he
rather hang out with a loving dog. He then beings to tell me, that these are a
combination of feelings that he gets before a crowd. Sometimes Mr. Bittman feels resentful and
needed and sometimes loved, Mr. Bittman is a book artist.
Mr. Bittman then proceeds to tell me how book writing can
be. Writing can be solitary, but it can
also feel like everyone wants a piece of you. Almost like people think you’re
important. Like people can about that
you have to say, so Mr. Bittman gives the people what they want. A response as best he can.
As the weeks fly by on Mr. Bittman book tour, he has
gathered more then enough information or complaints about airports, planes,
trains, cars, and hotels. Everybody’s
headache when traveling. He then begins
to compare some more information he has gathered from his trip, like the
pork-and-broccoli-rabe sandwich in Philly to rooms full of people asking
questions that he will never be able to answer, but others that he can answer.
What is the proper way to answer a question? Mr. Bittman
asks himself. Well a thoughtful answer
to one question is usually a paragraph long for him. But by giving a long answer it would limit
the interviewer and audience their chance to voice their concerns. So how does Mr. Bittman solve this problem,
he simply says “the more difficult the
question, the shorter the answer” for example “How do we change the food
system?” Bittman responds “slowly, one step at a time”. This is an example of questions he deals
with from both interviewer and the public.
But when people come up to Mr. Bittman individually, “the
questions change” he states. Or they
feel more meaningful. And they are all
common based questions. Questions that
he heard a million times beforehand. For
example should I buy organic food? Or how can I but a decent lunch? Most of these questions that Bittman receives
from his audience, really revels how important food is to people.
Questions like these are a lot easier for Mr. Bittman to handle, but
they are also meaningful. It’s because
their answers are empowering rather the frustrating.
This is the point that Mr. Bittman is trying to
emphasize. We can look and the big
picture of things, like we should. But
that is a big issue, one that will take years to fix. Maybe so big, that if we try as a people to
fix it, it becomes discouraging. Mr.
Bittman believes that right now people have made a little progess, and Mr.
Bittman is confident the we will make much more. But we first have to understand how big the problem
is. And then from there, it will take
a campaign finance reform, a representative House, the abolition of the
Senate, and a lot of restructuring and re-regulating.
Mr. Bittman begins to say, it is one thing to talk about
changing the food system, we talk about changing everything. In a way we should start to prepare ourselves
for sudden change. It’s not impossible.
But the food system is not our
only problem. For example we are still
fighting to get the minimum wage raised to 15 dollars. A lot if not all of
these problems are out of our individual control, and it is easy to lose the
faith. We as a people always had to
fight for what we believed in. But it is
not impossible for us to win. For
example gay marriage.
Since we all know that some of us will not live to see
these things happen, that gives us just that much more of a reason to keep
pushing. Mr. Bittman then gives us
things that we can do to help out food system. Like swearing off McDonalds and
Pepsi, or teaching the kids how to cook at home, or even pay for food from
a framer who isn’t growing a thousand acres
of corn. These are some things that we
can do. Are they easy? Sometimes, but not all the time, it is like a New year
resolution, or starting to try and exercise.
But the one thing that both of those situations have in
common is, that it helps you realize two things. One that is difficult and Two it can be
done. Mr. Bittman then starts to tell me
what he realized, that he knows that he is sounding preaching, but sometimes
that’s the way it is when speaking public.
But during his journey of becoming a public speaking he as had people
come to him and thank him for help changing their lives. And other who ask him
to help them change their lives. At the
end of the day he states “the small things, the seemingly little changes, they
do matter.
He then asks the question again “How do we change the
food system?”. He answers “that is a
question that cannot be answered directly.”
The things we can do are we petition, make some noise, don’t settle for
the grudging, halting. Downright stupid changes the government agencies
make. Most importantly we do not
quit. He then asks another question “How
do I change my relationship with food?”
that is the question that only you can answer for yourself. He ends his
statement with “we need both questions.
But in a way the second one, the littler one, is much more powerful”.
