What Should We Eat? Eating Alaska Continues to Provoke

Last night I showed the documentary, ‘Eating Alaska” to students from the University of San Francisco.

The students are in Sitka, AK for a two week environmental studies program. As they watched the 57 minute film, I reviewed the first draft of a user’s guide for Tracing Roots, a documentary we hope to finish and start sharing soon.

I’ve been at screenings and talks with Eating Alaska in high schools, on college campuses, at film festivals, local food and sustainability events, conferences of social scientists and environmental educators, plus public libraries from Nome to Warsaw. I pulled the plug on traveling to screenings after awhile (though a good offer to a fun place would be hard to turn down), feeling it was time to move on and wondering if I had more to say.

The credits came up. I looked away from my computer screen and my thoughts on retreating glaciers, intellectual property and cultural heritage, and wandered to the front of the room.

The discussion after the screening reminded me again of all the questions students and those not in the classroom have among other things about what they eat, about the choices we make as consumers in a changing environment about what we can do to make our homes, campuses and communities more environmentally friendly.

Some of the post screening questions and topics that came up, with a few of my responses in parenthesis:

“What should we eat?  (That is a huge question)”
“Are all GMOS bad? (Organic is much healthier. There are a lot of risks with GMOS….)”
“But how do we feed 7 billion people?”
“Do organics remind you of class warfare?/Is access to good food is a class issue? (Yes)”
“What if we all tried to live of the land? (Yes, that could be hard on resources).”
“Did you ever pull the trigger? (Would you?) ”
“If all of the transportation of food was green, without a negative carbon footprint/impact, what would eating local mean ?(community -culture-connection)”

OK. I’m not sure as a documentary filmmaker, who needs to stop writing and get in the house to vacuum pack some smoke salmon, I have many answers.

Fittingly, at the end of the evening, one student came up and thanked us for creating a film that didn’t point to a bad guy,  didn’t act like there were simple solutions and left her thinking.

The next Eating Alaska screening is Saturday August 9th at 7:30 pm in Talkeetna, Alaska, hosted by the Denali Arts Council.  Check out “What Sitka Eats” our tumblr blog created by Lucy Wang, an Artchange intern. We welcome submissions and invite other communities and campuses to replicate it.

Berry stained hands and some miscellaneous thoughts

I grew up in cities: Beijing, New Orleans, Houston, and the Chicago suburbs. For me, living off the land went as far as growing a single bean sprout in a yogurt container filled with soil bought from the local gardening store. Once a year, my family would go grapefruit picking in a orchard about an hour and a half away by car. So coming to Sitka, it’s been quite change to be in a small town where people pride themselves in being independent: fishing, gardening, harvesting beach asparagus, berry picking, and so on. Here are some of my adventures so far in Sitka.

1. Salmonberries

Here’s a close up of a salmonberry. They grow everywhere in Sitka. I have a love-hate relationship with them. By that, I mean I love them but they are so distracting. It takes me twice as long to get anywhere because I stop and eat a lot of salmonberries on the way. They’re not very good for making jam or pies though because they’re not so sweet.

2.  Beach Asparagus

Beach asparagus, (or Salicornia) is a lush, bright green plant that grows in saltwater. You harvest it during times of low tide when it’s above the water. Brooke and Paul (Alina, another intern’s host parents, check out her blog here!) took us up some mysterious water passage where we passed about twenty different islands to find their “secret” harvesting spot.

3. Seaweed

Alina and I went on a Sitka Conservation Society boat trip to this little island to see marine life on a low tide. There, I held a sea star. I touched a barnacle. I learned about the basalt rocks that made up the archipelago of islands only 600,000 years old. (They’re only babies in the geologic time scale). On the island, I kept seeing patches and patches of seaweed, bull kelp, and sea lettuce. I broke off a bit of some seaweed and tasted it. It tasted great (or at least edible) so Alina and I harvested some. I love the word harvest. It’s loaded with so much meaning. I think of farmers, the Native Alaskans, and on a grander scale, all humans. Our ancestors spent much of their day consumed with harvesting, cooking, and eating food. And now, here I am in Sitka, spending all day documenting the process of harvesting, cooking, and eating food, all while figuring out how to cook, grocery shop, and live on my own for the first time.

The pot of seaweed was pretty gross. There was a lot of salt water stuck in between the seaweed membranes which bursted as the water heated up. Mmm, salty sea soup. Anyway, it was way more trouble than I thought it would be to cook the seaweed. I had to wash each leaf about seven times to get rid of the sea mucus stuck on it. Then, I boiled the leaves, let them soak in water overnight to get some of the salt out. The next day, I washed them again. got rid of all the spiky thorns, and finally cut it up and made a seaweed salad. The seaweed salad was delicious, so I suppose it was worth it.

It took me over 30 hours to get to Sitka, Alaska from Beijing. Granted, I made a brief stop in Seattle where I saw some fish fly at Pike Place and visited Mark Dion’s Vivarium (think: life springing from a dead tree in an enclosed greenhouse). The first thing I noticed was that the sky looked the same as it did in Beijing: gray, one-dimensional, dreary. My only comfort was that the weather condition was created by clouds in the sky, and not in fact by billions of specks of smoke and dust and carcinogens looming overhead on a sunny day.

Sunset at Tiananmen Square

Anyway, hi! I’m Lucy. I’m working with Artchange Inc. for the summer and Ellen, the director, brain behind this,  filmmaker all in one wanted me to introduce myself and get some of my thoughts down about Sitka before becoming to immersed in Alaska.

I spent the last five weeks or so in East Asia. There, I talked to quite a few college students. They talked back to me, in perfect British English. I listened. I asked tough questions. They stammered a bit but answered them. With such frankness, these students shared their thoughts on Tiananmen, sex, love, friendship, the future, success, God, and their parents’ expectations. So here are my thoughts on their thoughts (I know, how meta.)

I’m never quite so patriotic as when I come back from China. Though Americans don’t make the best use of their political freedom, at least there is the opportunity to push for change. When I asked one of my Chinese friends why people generally had no opinions about politics, her answer was so perceptive, yet raw that I was left speechless.

“We can’t care or talk about politics. Because even when we do, there is nothing we can change. So we don’t think about it. We just think about the things we can change: where we live, what we do, what we can buy.”

Another friend explained first experience with YouTube during high school. As we sat and talked outside on a humid summer evening, I realized  she is the quintessential 21st century teenager, inseparable from her iPhone, getting live updates from the World Cup, the world at her fingertips. Yet, her first time seeing a YouTube video was only a year or so ago. While on a field trip to Hong Kong, she and a group of classmates crowded around a laptop to watch a scene of the Tiananmen Protests via YouTube. It was her first glimpse at what happened over twenty five years ago at the protests which are not acknowledged by the Chinese government nor mentioned in any history books. What’s more heartbreaking, the Chinese are generally uninformed about the systematic lack of human rights in their own country.

In a way, Tiananmen signaled to the Chinese that they couldn’t afford to care about politics. When people cared too much, things like the Tiananmen Protests happened. Like the hundreds of thousands of other protests held in China each year, they are silently and firmly crushed by the government with grave consequences for the protesters. Though the Chinese labor camps may be closing, conditions are not much better for dissenters.

An interactive wall where people are asked to write their wishes down

On a lighter note, the college girls I talked to had a lot to say about love, relationships, and sex.

“In recent years, there’s this very popular saying to describe the ideal man “高富帅” which is translated literally into “tall, rich, handsome.”

However, I was pleasantly surprised that most girls didn’t actually desired this ideal. Instead, their first criteria was to find someone whom they love and who will love them. Happiness, they deduced, did not come from good looks but a loving home. On the other hand though, it is so implicitly assumed that their husbands will have at least a house, car, and job before marrying that everyone failed to mention these assumptions to me. In fact, a lot of couples end up separating over disagreements between the man and woman’s family over financial details. (i.e. Whose name is on the property deed?)

Sex. From what I gather, it occurs rarely, if at all on college campuses.

“Dorms are strictly single gender and guards are posted to keep them that way. So couples resort to a large amount of PDA outside at night, usually on some benches in supposedly obscure corners of campus that I always seem end up at.”

But it’s okay because the darkness shrouds their identity and they are not nearly as disturbed by my presence as I am by theirs. The conservative sexual attitude extend deeper than dorm rules though. When I pushed my new friends to explain their attitudes toward sex, they cited everything from a more conservative environment to ancient Chinese values to their sexual education, during which they are taught that their virginity is a precious gift, to be given only to their future husbands.

Speaking of husbands, they’re in pretty high demand. The percentage of the student population in a relationship is probably somewhere around fifty percent. In some ways, it’s pretty cute. In other, I imagine the pressure of finding someone to date must be immense. Most relationships start over social media, not actual social contact. “Why?”, I asked over and over again. It seems like no one really knows, which is fair, I suppose. Some girls blame it on the guys being shy and passive, which is also fair I guess. I mean, that’s not just a Chinese phenomenon.

Stay tuned for more to come!

Riding the Ride: Lessons from a little blue bus

He’s a morning driver for the Green Line bringing people to work in the early am. He greets every passenger who gets on the bus, and taught me step by step how to secure my bike to the front of the bus. (After I tried on my own of course,  fiddling with bike, camera, and mike in hand for a good embarrassing minute.) I see him in the mornings and he always says hi.

As does Debbie, who drives the red line out on HPR.
And Clip who drives the blue.

I met John just a couple of days ago, while catching the Green Line to SEARHC hospital, a major destination for bus users coming to and from work. I ride to SEARHC in the mornings, but have no appointment. I ride to the Ferry Terminal in the afternoons, but have no ticket. I ride downtown, and down HPR and off onto Sawmill Creek Road. That’s why I’m here in Sitka, to hop-on and off a non-hop-on-hop-off bus.

“Is that what you do? Ride the bus and… talk to people?” a new friend asks me at a quintessential Sitka potluck.
Well, kind of.

It’s what an average day looks like, carrying the video camera, tripod, and microphone around, asking strangers to sign Artchange waivers, standing on the bridge, waiting for the perfect moment for that mountains-in-the-background shot of the little blue bus. I collect the stories and support of those who ride the ride. And then I make short videos.

“Well that doesn’t sound very exciting. A documentary about the bus?” asks my grandpa, the night before I leave to catch my Seattle-Ketchikan-Sitka plane. “It’s not going to be a documentary, grandpa!” I laugh and add, but it does leave me wondering. What’s exciting about the bus?

For Josie and Sabrina, it’s pulling the rope when it’s time for their stop.

For Destiny, it’s getting on and realizing all her friends are on too.

Oh, and for me?
For me, it’s yes, pulling the cord, being a new member of the bus crew, getting to meet and know locals everyday. But it’s also fighting for something that seems small but really isn’t. I may not be fighting for world peace (what a paradox that is) or working for basic human rights and environmental justice out in the field, but changing people’s perceptions regarding who takes the local bus and helping those who fully depend on it keep their principal and often only method of transportation is a pretty big deal. Suddenly a little blue bus seems like a big deal. Especially if you’re a storyteller. Suddenly, the footage that you thought was made of dustbunnies (as Ellen calls it) becomes a story worth sharing.

Clip, Debbie and John, Sabrina, Josie and Destiny, they’re all Peanut Butter & Jelly Heroes. Peanut Butter & Jelly heroes are the people making society’s Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches, helping those who need it, doing their best and working behind the scenes without the accolades and attention. I’m excited to make films with them as the heroes.

And so, off I go, back on the bus.

Feel free to follow my tumblr for more on and off bus adventures: http://berriesandbears.tumblr.com/
And as our very first meme says, follow us, Artchange, Inc summer interns with the hashtag #stikastories.