Food As Art

If I ask you: “What are the things that inspire you?” I will certainly get different answers. Did you notice that “things” that inspire us are actually not things? Family, friendship, sustainability, leadership are not material things. As for myself, art and cooking are some of these “things”. I love to look at art almost as much as I like to make it myself. I have the same passion for food: I appreciate good food, I like to cook, and sometimes I draw or take pictures of what I cook or eat. You may think: yes, we know: food is art, but it requires a whole bunch of ingredients, lots of time and an advanced skill set to practice it, which is a challenge in our everyday busy life. Let’s see if a well-known maxim “Food is art” necessarily means complexity of resources.

Different colors and nuances are needed to represent the multicolour world around us. How many colors would we need to draw an apple, which is a rich blend of shades and nuances, starting from pale yellow and golden orange to ruby and carmine? According to Encyclopaedia Britannica: there are as many colors as we have words to name them. The World Color Survey brought up a collection of color names consisting of 320 different colors, which are organized into 8 rows of 40 colors per row. However, if we had a chance to observe an artist’s work, on the artist’s palette we would see only few colors, maybe six, five, or maybe just three.

In 1666 Sir Isaac Newton was the first to introduce us to the color wheel based on red, yellow, and blue. Ever since that time, many scientists and artists have come up with their own variation of this concept. Why? The magic is that the one and same color can appear totally different depending on the other colors it is mixed with and the colors that surround it.

First, in the color wheel we have the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue – cyan, magenta, and yellow. They cannot be obtained by mixing with other colors. All other colors are derived from these three. In the second place there are secondary colors: green, orange, and purple. Colors, like red-orange, red-violet, yellow-green, etc. are mixed from the primary and secondary colors. One color is set as the dominant, the other add richness.

Now, let’s look at the food: just like painting, it is a colourful and delicious source of inspiration in every culture, and some of the culinary traditions exist for thousand of years. Cooking, just like art, is an expression of the land where you live, and of the culture of that place. As we mix colors, we mix ingredients, and different proportions give different results. “Good painting is like good cooking: it can be tasted, but not explained,” – said an artist. He was probably also a cook. Actually, lots of great artists were also food lovers and fine gourmet cooks.

To make our food savoury, we need the mixture of ingredients. But if cooking can be compared to painting, to produce a tasty result do we need long lists of ingredients, or maybe just five, maybe four, or even three? Does it really mean that to be tasty it necessarily requires a broad palette – array of ingredients? Or is it first and foremost to appreciate fresh food and simple cooking?

Simple cooking from local ingredients might seem quite boring. What would we have on our plates other than carrots and potatoes? Not too inspirational. It is like to say to an artist not to use certain colors. But what if we just try to apply to cooking this artistic approach – mix primary, basic “colors” - products, set one as dominant and the other to add richness - we might get incredible results, just by removing extraneous ingredients. This is actually a remarkably liberating way to restore our body’s nutritional equilibrium and to maintain our weight, which is a popular idea in our society. We are bombarded with complex and often conflicting dietary information that requires elaborated skills to make sense of it. And yet 68 percent of North-American adults and almost 32 percent of school-aged children and adolescents are still overweight or obese.

US food writer and journalist Michael Pollan in his book “Food Manifesto” said: “Eat food, not much, mostly plants’. To which I add – again, it is from Michael Pollan: “I’d suggest that you eat meals, not snacks, eat wild food whenever possible, and avoid any product whose ingredients are unfamiliar or unpronounceable, or more than five in number.”

Operation Come Home

This was my first time attending their event: “Operation Come Home” Annual General Meeting, St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities, May 12, 2010. Typical order of business: reports, budget, administrative questions, thanks to supporters… “Operation Come Home” would like to thank the homeless youth of Ottawa who in their struggles courageously hold out a beacon of hope for their future. We strive to support your dreams,” – says Elspeth McKay, its Executive Director. I’m sitting behind them: those who identified “eviction by parents or guardians, parental conflict or conflict with family as the most prominent reasons for their homelessness” (“From Homeless to Home”, research by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Alliance to End Homelessness, Carleton University and U Ottawa). According to the data provided by Alliance to End Homelessness, the number of homeless youth grew by 27% since 2008 and continues to grow.

“Operation Come Home” (OCH) is a non-profit charitable organization working to help more than 350 street-involved and at-risk youth, ages 16-30 from all over Canada, preventing them from homelessness. “Preventing homeless youth from becoming homeless adults,” – Elspeth often says: it reflects the OCH mission very clearly. She said this when I first met her as our guest speaker at Algonquin. She was talking during our CSR class about two social enterprise ventures for OCH: BottleWorks and BeadWorks, successful both financially and socially. The enterprises employ more than 100 youth. Many of the youth that have started working have found a place of their own to live and have had the ability to find a steady job as a result of working in one of the enterprises. BottleWorks was short listed as one of the top 12 social enterprises across Canada.

Originally called Operation Go Home, the organization recently changed its name to Operation Come Home to emphasize the need to maintain its original mandate: OCH remains the only organization in Canada to reunite youth with their families through its Reunite program.

Sitting behind these young men and women I was so emotional that I forgot about my camera. I wouldn’t've been able to take pictures anyways, as at some point I found myself crying. Thanks Ashley for sharing yours.

Algonquin: Life After

Chef Mario Ramsay presents the menu

Carrot soup with goat cheese

Chicken confit and chicken breast with vegetables

Dessert time

Crème brûlée with maple syrup

Our people - Algonquin!

Communications professionals

Natalie Lavigne - Ecoverde, and Emma Bedlington - Stratos

Sandra Markus, Communications Director at Algonquin, President of Ottawa Chapter International Association of Business Communicators

Where we all are? Some are visible through Facebook – surrounded by tropical landscapes, or smiling to the ocean in a Sun salutation posture. Some live in the area, so I ran into them couple of times, and each time was in the air this exulting feeling of a special connection, which only student life creates. It’s been three weeks and two days now. Three week “back-to-life” after an eight-month marathon called Green Business Management: a non-stop succession of study, analysis, exploration, revelations, reflections, discussions, confusions, conclusions, breakthroughs... All dedicated to the big three: People, Planet, Profit. To our responsibility to do our bit building a more sustainable and more equitable world. Green Leaders, Agents of Change, where are you? It still feels as if we will be back to the class after a break… I look forward meeting you in a couple more weeks during our graduation get-together to hear your news and to relive our most memorable moments. I hope our "green" paths will cross again in time, and I will blog our follow-up stories.

This post, first for the three weeks after Algonquin, marking that I’m finally back to life, is about Algonquin – our green Alma Mater. It is about an event I attended more than a month ago, during Earth Day celebration, so…

April 22, Thursday, 5:30 PM. Restaurant International at Algonquin College. I didn’t even acknowledge its existence while being a student: all the time running, deadlines for the assignments in mind… I have to admit that Algonquin campus is a place that didn’t stop to surprise me, revealing its simple miracles all along the way: the comfort of its facilities, the taste of the food in its cafeterias (best salad-bar I’ve ever had!), green cleaning program (so that you can tirelessly work for many hours – and no headache!), a thoughtful selection of goods in its stores (so that you don’t have to worry if you forget some supply for your presentation, or are having any other emergency of the kind); its new LEED-certified building growing beside, as we were growing through our program… Restaurant International became one more miracle I discovered being at the last week of my studies.

Restaurant International, Algonquin College School of Hospitality's teaching restaurant is a fine dining establishment run by Algonquin students. Culinary students create the menus and cook, and students of hospitality program deliver the service. That night Restaurant International put local on the table: we were having a 100-Mile Diet Dinner. All courses cooked with homegrown ingredients, including local seasonal produce.

Who said: “Eating local is boring”? Just listen:

Enrée: carrot soup with goat cheese (carrots – St Andre D’Avelin, goat cheese – Lindsay);
Main course: chicken confit and chicken brest (Spencerville) accompanied by a selection of vegetables – pureed rutabaga, beets, green onions (all from Navan), potatoes (St Andre D’Avelin), wild garlic (Cornwall), and fiddlehead (Alexandria).
Dessert: crème brûlée with maple syrup (maple syrup and sugar – Proulx Farms, Casselman, eggs – Navan, cream and butter – Markham).

All together - a mmm-yummy attack on uninspiring clichés about cooking and eating local: all was creative, memorable (a month later it is still worth saying), and absolutely DELICIOUS! And also, as seen at Algonquin many times before and under different circumstances: all done with high-level professionalism and passion. Work is love made visible: this is Algonquin style.

I hope the event organizers – the Ottawa Chapter of the International Association of Business Communications and Ecoverde, coaching and communication in sustainable development – will forgive me for starting with the dinner, served in support of the event itself: “Communicating about, with and for Sustainability”, an opportunity for networking and professional development. Conferences and other events hosted by Algonquin are worth a separate post. This time again, an inspiring speaker – Natalie Lavigne, a certified presenter for The Climate Project Canada, shared her experience in communicating sustainability with those who are taking active roles in addressing environmental and social issues: federal government employees, sustainability consultants, Ottawa U professors and students, and communications professionals.

It is actually quite exciting to graduate from an institution providing you with a pioneering certificate, fresh knowledge, eventful memories, bonds of friendship, a great address for eating out, and a year-round calendar of exciting events!

Bye Algonquin! Life continues. Looking forward to meeting again!

Hungry Planet Exhibition at the Canada Science and Technology Museum

In 1994, in a popular magazine, I think it was ELLE I brought from France, I saw fascinating pictures from 30 countries showing people’s belongings put outside of their houses. It was Material World: A Family Global Portrait project, inspired by the UN International Year of the Family, implemented by a group of photographers around the world, and directed by Peter Menzel. I think I still keep this magazine among other “treasures” – books, periodicals, and newspaper cuts - for these impressive pictures: a global portrait of our cultures, values, and lifestyles.

Here is another project by Peter Menzel, who is showing this time our global dietary portrait - Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. And here is again this alluring liberty to look inside people’s private spaces and this shocking difference in human conditions.

Peter Menzel’s approach didn’t change: we see again “average” families of four or more people, like, for example, an American family, which in Material World project was represented with 2 TV sets, an American flag and a Bible in the foreground. This time again American family is at the "rich" end of the exhibition - $450 -$350 spent weekly on food: happy faces of two young men holding two extra-large “crunchy” boxpizzas are the first things you cannot help but notice. On the opposite wall an average Japanese family exhibits for a comparable weekly budget a contrasting visual result, with lots of fresh fish among other "stuff", which, seen from our North-American "remoteness", could be classified as “different”.

Walking from the $500 weekly ration of an averge German family to the “meager” end of the exhibition, where people from Guatemala, Mali, and Ecuador are shown with what they can have weekly for their food budget of $20-30, you will certainly notice the following:

- the progressive predominance of naturally grown vegetables and cereals, which breaks at the level of weekly $20 food budgets, where it all becomes just scarcity;
- the complete absence of industrial pizzas in the Italian kitchen, but a couple of pizza boxes on a Britain's table;
- an impressive number of buns and other bread products characteristic for Italy, Bosnia, Cuba, and India; actually, you could say that almost every nation in the world is a big bread eater;
- the average 1.5 bottles of wine on a French table will attest the statistical authenticity of the representations;
- a colorful variety of spices used in an Indian household will awake your imagination, and you might feel a bit hungry yourself.

For the sobering dessert: the very last picture showing a refugee family in Chad with their weekly supply worth $1.

I never forgot my own first “initiations” to the Western lifestyle by my friends in France having a very strong ethical code and a rich humanitarian experience. Among other things I remember that they would never order a Banana Split for the reason of its “aggressive luxury”, offensive for the sight and the mind, imprinted by this shocking number: 1.2 billion hungry people in the world. I cannot remember a single meal I had since then without thinking about it. Especially when I’m looking at the size of an average North-American restaurant order, or see how my party friends are throwing in the garbage generous leftovers. I cannot stop thinking each time when I’m cooking for my small family in Canada what my mother, who lives in a country where food is expensive for many, had on her plate this day.































On our way back from the museum, we reflected on the title of the exhibition: Hungry Planet. We thought that this is an exhibition about those most hungry whose pictures were not exhibited, but who are so strongly present, because once you acknowledge, you cannot forget. We thought that all people everywhere – rich, poor, average – get hungry and need food. And as it was time for us to buy grocery for the upcoming week, we decided to complete the global culinary portrait by our two-women-and-a-cat coalition, which suddenly became a thought provoking experience. We don’t buy any coke, juices, or other industrial beverages, having for all drinks filtered water and countless teas and coffees. We have fresh fruits, vegetables, fish and poultry rather than industrial pizzas, precooked food, or red meat. With 1 bag of Doritos, 4 cans of cat food, one sushi meal, 6 popsicles, one can of beer, and a glass of wine, we are, I think, pretty moderate in our consumption. And yet price-wise, our portrait would go to the “fatty” end of the exhibition. Well, the reality is that eating fresh and healthy is expensive. As Anna said: “Ten apples cost as much as 10 bags of potato chips”.

This week we didn’t buy our usual Kit-Kat – having a break waiting until they stop using the palm oil coming from palm plantation grown in place of cut rainforests in Indonesia. We didn’t buy tuna in spite of the failure of the ban to trade it at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Consumer choices will make the difference. And let's not forget: as Food Bank says, HUNGER HAS MANY FACES.

Bon appétit!

“A Chemical Reaction” documentary presentation by University of Ottawa Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic and Faculty of Law

“There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.” – this is the beginning of “A Fable for Tomorrow”, opening Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”. We all know what happened to this town, which, as Rachel Carson says, “does not actually exist, but … might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world.” Over the years we witnessed numerous cases when towns in America and all over the world were affected by pesticides.

Here is again a pesticide story in a little town, in Quebec this time, and one more time a woman is at the heart of it, called, just like Rachel Carson, “fanatic” and “crazy” – Dr. June Irwin, a dermatologist, who noticed a correlation between spring pesticide sprays and skin reactions in her patients. She got ball rolling one of the most powerful community initiatives in North America. For 17 years, residents and the municipal government of Hudson in Quebec raised the alarm over the dangerous health impacts of chemical pesticides. Their fight culminated in a 2001 Supreme Court win banning the cosmetic use of pesticides based on precautionary principle: without waiting until “someone dies”, as says the retired by now Supreme Court of Canada Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dube.

To me this was a story about success-centered values our societies built over centuries, and signs it developed to externalize them: big house, big car, immaculate green lawn… To the extent where we are ready to poison ourselves, our children and pets in order to convey to the world the message about our success and the care we take about our households. Maybe it is time to revisit these values, and those couple of dandelions on our non-sprayed lawn will be the sign that we actually care about our dearest.

It was also a story of a person who has the nerve to be different. At the end of the film Dr. Irwin says: “It’s not about me. It’s about us. It is about community.” Every article about this movie I found quoted this phrase, which certainly tells a whole lot about the morality and sanity of this eccentric-looking person, called “crazy” by many. There is another phrase she says, which explains to me her courage to be, to look, and to act the way she considers her own, no matter what the others think or say: “I know very well where I’m going, and no one could offside me.”

Personally, I found that the case itself, and people who participated in it, are way more interesting than the movie about them. On that night, interesting people were not only on the screen, but also in the audience: Mme L’Heureux-Dube, Ecojustice founder Stewart Elgie, Stephane Dion, numerous Law Faculty professors and students, and Paul Tukey, the producer of the movie.

It was an ordinary Thursday night, as Chelsea said, one of these gloomy nights, when you would rather sit at home having for the whole world your laptop, and the maximum of what you would want as friendly gathering would be replying to e-mails in your inbox. The program gets closer to its end, and midterms are flowing into finals with no interval, leaving us little free time. All these thoughts: “What’s next?” are there. There is a bit of a saturation, too: one more “green” documentary – oh, maybe just bookmark it for the future reference. And yet, an inexplicable force, probably called love for what you are doing, pulled us out of our cocoons to get together for the umpteenth environmental documentary, and we had a great time watching it, being among like-minded people, and having this moment of a real, non-virtual discussion afterwards. Thanks, Chelsea, Jan and Jen for your company!

Non-cooking week: day 7

The "non-cooking" 7-day commitment not to use the stove (microwave is not in the game as it is not good for cooking anyway) is done. As a protagonist in the movie “Julie and Julia”, who aspired to cook using 524 recipes from Julia Child’s cookbook during a year and to blog about it every day, I didn't cook using the stove for the whole week and reported on it in my blog.

The results obtained from the experiment:

1. It reduced by half the time spent in the kitchen preparing food.

2. It made it less taxing because arranging food beautifully on a plate is easier than to cook a meal from scratch.

3. It is fun as it is colorful, fresh, tasty, there is a huge variety of recipes and ideas, and plenty of options in the stores. Few of them are local, unfortunately, "100-miles diet" is a challenge at every level of the food chain in its current state.

4. It significantly reduced the number of dishes to wash - less water to use.

5. It is certainly healthy as it contains much more raw food (and the summer is coming!) and less meat.

6. It was a small-scale contribution to the carbon emission reduction. Well, yes, too small, but it is worth mentioning as all big changes are sum of small differences.

So, the non-cooking campaign will continue. With no excess, of course: we certainly will boil an egg, or cook a good home made soup, or pasta, or this big veggie I have in my basket: rutabaga. But for the busy times, which are most of the times, the no-cook cooking is an excellent option.

To inspire ideas there are books:

Cooking Green Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen by Kate Heyhoe.

Cooking Green is the next step in eco-friendly lifestyle. How to think like an environmentalist in the kitchen? In her book, Kate Heyhoe says that “12 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions (or 14,160 pounds of carbon dioxide per household) result from just growing, preparing and shipping our food” and that “appliances account for 30 percent of our household energy use, and the biggest guzzlers are in the kitchen.” How we cook is as important as what we cook. Heyhoe talks a lot about cooking appliances and methods, rather than to just focus on recipes.

No-cook cookbooks:

"No-cook Cookbook: Over 200 Simple Recipes and Ideas for Mouthwatering Meals without Cooking" by Jason Lowe

For pasta lovers:

Joie Warner's "No-Cook Pasta Sauces"

"The Natural Nutrition No-Cook Book" by Kymythy R. Schultze

Black bean salad

If you have an interesting no-cook idea or recipe, could you please drop it in the comment? Thanks for sharing!

Non-cooking week: day 6

Danish open faced sandwiches

Non-cooking week: day 5

Antipasto: proscuitto, genoa, sardines, artichokes, roasted peppers, olives, cambozola, and fresh focaccia.

Non-cooking week: day 4

Smoked salmon and lemony lentil salad: canned lentils, red onion, cucumber, and red pepper. Dressing: salt, pepper, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, and olive oil (fresh dill is an asset).

Reminder: just as a protagonist in the movie “Julie and Julia”, who aspired to cook using 524 recipes from Julia Child’s cookbook during a year and to blog about it every day, I will "non-cook" for the whole week and will report on it in my blog.

"Midterm evaluation": very positive experience so far: less time in the kitchen, no fry/saucepans to wash, less waste than I actually expected, it is tasty and light (is it because it is meatless?) and so, will be less inches in my waist?

STOMP: tribal dance of the industrial era

STOMP is a non-traditional dance troupe (originating in Brighton, UK) that uses the body and ordinary objects to create a physical theatre performance (Wikipedia).

The objects, i.e. trash cans, chairs, newspapers, boxes of matches, lighters, sand, brooms, kitchen sinks, cans, lids, plastic bags, banana peels, and all the other “stuff” (remember “The Story of Stuff”by Anne Leonard?) found an interesting recycling destiny: they became musical instruments. Musicians: group of janitors, personified eloquently without words by the performers who are percussionists, dancers, and comical actors at the same time. Overall, an eye-opening experience, after which your outlook on ordinary evolves to the point where you see the whereabouts less commonplace but more nervy, venturous, and undiscovered.

It is very non-traditional, and it is unique. To this concert you can bring a can or any non-perishable product to put in the bin at the entrance. The Food Bank bin at the NAC entrance is not what you would see on any concert night.

The show has an interesting touring concept: there are three groups performing at the equal level of energy and spark, one is London/UK-based, and the other two are working in North America. Result: lots of enthusiastic spectators all over the world, and less carbon emissions.

These pictures are not of the show itself, they are of its presentiment. Couple more minutes, and your guts will vibrate, and "the rhythm is gonna get you". What is the music playing now in my head? Water Cooler Bottle Jazz – my favorite!

Watch these amazing moments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7c9ASVfNc

Non-cooking week: day 3

Chinese salad with non-cooked noodles: I just soaked them in the mixture of soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, peanut and sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, and mustard. Other ingredients: peas, celery, red pepper, green onion, water chestnuts, and peanuts.

Non-cooking week: day 2

Simple classics: greek pita with humus, kalamata olives, veggies, and tuna in oil.

Supper of a “green” student

“Green”, or conventional, student’s life is hectic this time around: midterms. It is twice as hectic because there is a couple of students in the house. Last week with my daughter we signed a non-cooking agreement. No more mental math: “How long it will take to cook this and that?...” No more cooking, for the whole week. The agreement came into effect only this week, because at the moment of its ratification there were some cooked leftovers to finish in the fridge. And as a protagonist in the movie “Julie and Julia”, who aspired to cook using all 524 recipes from Julia Child’s cookbook during a single year and to blog about it every day, I will non-cook (please forgive me this grammatical whim!) for 7 days in a row and will report on it in my blog.

So, today is our day “eins”: Rotkraut Salat - red cabbage salad with green apples, walnuts and lingonberries sauce.

Dan Barber's Foie Gras Parable

http://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_barber.html

How many times I’ve heard this: the way to a man's heart is through his stomach (I was actually very much surprised that this piece of wisdom in English is worded absolutely identical to Russian). However, it is equally true for women: how nice it is to see a man in the kitchen! Somehow, all of my memorable relationships started with my man cooking for me. So, Dan Barber, a cooking guy, is certainly my hero. And if we are what we eat, I choose to book a table at a chef-thinker’s eating house.

This is what TED.com says about him: "Dan Barber is the chef at New York's Blue Hill restaurant, where he practices a close-to-the-land cooking married to agriculture and stewardship of the earth. As described on Chez Pim: "… it might… be a whole different universe. A model of self-sufficiency and environmental responsibility, Stone Barns is a working farm, ranch, and a three-Michelin-star-worthy restaurant." Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, it's a vision of a new kind of food chain. Barber's philosophy of food focuses on pleasure and thoughtful conservation: on knowing where the food on your plate comes from and the unseen forces that drive what we eat."

On the TED show, chef Dan Barber tells the story of a small farm in Spain that has found a humane way to produce foie gras.

What??? Foie gras??? Quel horreur!!! ...

Paradoxes and duplicities of our societies, such as foie gras controversy, strike me with their naivety. Or hypocrisy? Restaurants and businesses serving foie gras are under attack and yet at the same time there is no problem with serving chicken. As an anthropologist Steve Striffler wrote in his book “Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food”: “I used to eat chicken without much thought about where it came from, or how and by whom it was raised and processed. Life was much easier then.” He reports on the way chickens are raised today. What he discovered about America’s favorite meat is not just unpleasant but is a powerful indictment of the whole industrial food system. The process of bringing chicken to our dinner tables is unhealthy for all concerned—from chicken to farmer to factory worker to consumer. Groups of foie gras protesters picketing restaurants serving foie gras have no problem with McDonald's, or other big chains that serve things that are raised in equally questionable circumstances.

As for myself, I successfully survived without foie gras in North America for so many years, even if I still remember the silky aftertaste of the real foie gras we degustated (this is an appropriate verb for foie gras) in Toulouse, served by my friends' local éleveur-producteur (and yes - bright yellow!). Not only this: I stopped eating beef long ago, I eat pork more and more rarely and ready to stop completely, chicken - idem, and I think the lobster I cooked for the last New Year’s Eve was the last, no matter how ethically it might have been grown. Yes, but what if tomorrow someone will describe and scientifically prove that plants suffer, too???

Verbal Images: Water

"I raised the bucket to his lips. He drank, his eyes closed. It was as sweet as some special festival treat. This water was indeed a different thing from ordinary nourishment. Its sweetness was born of the walk under the stars, the song of the pulley, the effort of my arms. It was good for the heart, like a present. When I was a little boy, the lights of the Christmas tree, the music of the Midnight Mass, the tenderness of smiling faces, used to make up, so, the radiance of the gifts I received."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, Chapter XXV

"J'ai porté le seau jusqu'à ces lèvres. Il but, les yeux fermés. C'était doux comme une fête. Cette eau était bien autre chose qu'un aliment. Elle était née de la marche sous les étoiles, du chant de la poulie, de l'effort de mes bras. Elle était bonne pour le coeur, comme un cadeau. Lorsque j'étais petit garçon, la lumière de l'arbre de Noël, la musique de la messe de minuit, la douceur des sourires faisaient, ainsi, tout le rayonnement du cadeau de Noël que je recevais."

John Deere - green?

Our guest speaker: Scott Lake who has been leading software companies for the past decade. He was a founder and the CEO of Shopify.com, one of the largest hosted e-commerce apps on the Web. He also founded one of the first social media marketing firms, ThinkSM. Scott was also VP of Technical Services at Tomoye Corporation, where he helped implement online communities at some of the largest organizations in the world, including Lockheed Martin, John Deere, the G8 and the US Army.

Our virtual guest speakers Karen Lekowski and Lynn Friesth from John Deere are on call and the topic is Virtual Collaboration.

On pictures: Scott waiting for the connection and myself presenting our virtual guests.

Question:

How does the "wide range of electronics-related products and information services using Global Positioning in agriculture and other markets (John Deere's vision of Intelligent Vehicle Systems) make John Deere green?

Their precision farming is based on Agronomic Management, Fleet Management, Business Management, Machine & Operator Productivity, Traceability and Environmental Compliance (from "John Deere GreenStar Products" at the Club of Rome)

Georg Kormann: John Deere GreenStar Products – Operator Assist Systems for Sustainable Farming

Georg Kormann, Manager Advanced Engineering at John Deere, gave an overview, how products can support the development of a sustainable agriculture. He presented among others automatic GPS connected machines which operate with a minimum of human efforts. He introduced also sensor networks and and gave an overview on efficiency gains by the new technologies.

INTERESTING ABOUT JOHN DEERE (NOT BY JOHN DEERE):

http://www.drburt.com/Blog/2009/06/16/whats-john-deeres-real-green/

Human Chain for Haiti on the Canal

Two kilometers, $10,000 raised