The Work of Changing My Mind

I’m non-monogamous when it comes to platforms. It’s a well-documented fact. Over my fiveish years of newsletter writing, I’ve used Mailchimp, Tinyletter, Buttondown, Revue, Ghost, Substack, Weebly, and now Beehiiv. Part of it is my curiosity about each shiny new platform that emerges. Another part is my resistance to being a ‘company man’ – I value my independence and staying nimble. Platforms can disappear at the snap of a billionaire’s fingers, as was the case with Revue, so I download my email list regularly and backup my posts. I do enough to have peace of mind, knowing I can’t control everything.

Changing my mind is a habit I’ve grown to value. As a young girl, I was enamored with people who seemed sure about things. On a frivolous note, it was always difficult for me to decide on a favorite movie or color or album. In some cases I picked a favorite to seem more sure than I was inside. At some point I realized I wasn’t the only one doing this. Many of the people I thought so confident were the same as me – putting a self together by claiming values. It’s fine to play with favorite colors, but with serious matters more elasticity is necessary. And it’s hard work.

I have a conversation regularly that goes like this: Oh, I was raised pretty conservative. My parents were old school. So was I, there was a lot of religious impact too that I didn’t even notice. It was just normal. Most of the people I knew were like my family. Right, and it was hard to disagree with my parents. Conversations shut down. Some topics were fine, but I remember bringing up, for example, weed, and it was a real hard line: It’s illegal, end of story. Yeah, it took me getting older and moving away. And making friends in college or at jobs. To really see more of the picture.

When Trump was elected the first time, it was me, Michael, and one other friend in our grad school bubble who could see a bit around the corner. Yes, we half whispered to each other while watching the votes roll in, he definitely might be president. In addition to coming from a conservative family, I credit my sense that my fellow countrymen could elect Trump to my time in college covering the protests after the anti-immigrant profiling law SB1070 passed. Walking through the crowds outside the gleaming Arizona Capitol dome showed me the reality of xenophobia and racism. At the election night party, we played Hilary Clinton bingo and booed the TV whenever Trump was shown, but the mood turned. Bowls of chips were left uneaten, nachos grew cold. Minds can change or be changed in a blink.

Substack and I have enjoyed a good two years, but it’s time for a change. Now that I have paid subscriptions, I’d like to keep every extra penny possible. Beehiiv is also more robust in a way that reminds me of WordPress mixed with Mailchimp, which lines up with my current goals. Mostly I’m apathetic about quibbling over differences between platforms. I’d rather write or read or talk with a friend – that’s how I’ve seen real change occur in my life.

Along with moving platforms, I worked on some new visuals for The Good Enough Weekly using the National Gallery of Art’s website to find free use images. I searched kitchen, farm labor, lunch, potato, cabbage, onion, grocery, and found a trove. When I think of food art, I first picture Matisse’s Still Life with Lemon (my current desktop image) or Antoine Vollon's Mound of Butter that Apoorva Sripathi wrote about so compellingly. The glow of fruit and cutlery will always spark something in me. But when looking for images to pair with my writing, I wanted art that shows the labor of getting food on the table. Sketches of women carrying heavy bags of potatoes or selling onions. A group sharing a meal in a dark room. Etchings of men eating soup or a couple in their kitchen, the woman, of course, at work and the man sitting.

The U.S. way of eating marketed by corporations to us regulars is ripe for change. Have your burger (or five) and eat it, too! That’s what the food ads tell me, but I see a lot of people who don't have enough food, or have too much without enough substance. Most everyone I talk to is stressed about food, even the folks who have enough money to buy groceries. As Errol Schweizer wrote, “So if you want to talk about local food, how and where it’s grown, owned, produced, marketed and allocated, you need to talk about grocery retail, its context and externalized costs and the broader challenges of transparent and ethical supply chains in the modern era of crisis.” That’s a lot of talking. Us non-millionaires are also told, constantly, that we have no time to cook, let alone talk about changing how we eat.

Another time I changed my mind was during the pandemic when shelves in my grocery store in my urban, semi-affluent, diverse city were bare. My city likes to think of itself as a paragon of abundance and opportunity. How can that be true when supplies can disappear overnight? Since then I’ve diversified how I shop for food to get to know the people in my local food system. After five years of consistent attention, I’m more grounded in reality. Things are bleak, and there is plenty of action to take. I’ve always cared about food but I would get overwhelmed at how big the system is and shy away. Eating differently, resisting the ‘normal’ American way, can start small but still be worth doing on a personal level – and who knows what can happen as more people change.

Join my paid subscriber chat on TOMATO TOMATO, the Discord server that Alicia Kennedy started and is the place to be for conversations on food, culture, ecology, and more. We begin in The Good Enough Weekly channel at 1pm PST.

The Good Enough Weekly comes out on Fridays, alternating essays, interviews, and blog posts on food, climate, and labor. Rooted in the Sonoran Desert.