Foundation Journal

I woke last night about 3 a.m. with clenched fists, the kind of tension that made me think if I had actually been sleeping for the last 4 hours since going to bed. There are plenty of events or situations in one's life to get upset or stressed over: a collapsed light pole left unattended and increased dumping in the Dunbar residential neighborhood near work in Kansas City; half the houses leveled, some recently bulldozed, on a friend's block on Brooklyn; shrinking payrolls and teacher layoffs due to state budget deficits; a car driver not giving me clearance on a morning run through residential streets; US admonishing the Mideast nations to not engage in violence to solve problems despite engaging in this approach for years; a co-worker's description of being blacklisted by police from traveling in his old Paseo corridor neighborhood; or a KC city council candidate describing police intimation driving through his own neighborhood. Any one of these problems could raise a p...

The Kansas City Food Policy coalition met today to discuss distribution and production policy as a committee of the group. As meeting facilitator Katherine Kelly with the KC Center for Urban Agriculture indicated in her email announcement, the meeting focused "on policy issues that affect the production, distribution, and access of healthy, local food...which will be taking the lead on figuring out what city/state/federal policy initiatives we could create or get involved in that would help strengthen the local farming and distribution community." As a newcomer to the group interested in their direction and progress, I noted there was a good collection of representatives from many different types of organizations: local growers, CSA distributors, government health educators, financial foundation sponsors, environmental groups, and university agriculture programs. Several individuals addressed jobs for urban core youth and economic development for the same area. The food...