This particular conversation was dominated instead by talk of budget issues, issues which are constantly looming over the shoulder of school cafeteria officials. The way in which every question I asked seemed to bring the conversation back to money concerns has forced me into greater identification with just how dependent on and strapped by state and federal funding schools actually are. The experience has reinforced for me the importance of interviewing. Because I am not researching as a person employed within the nutritional regime but, rather, as a lay person simply interested in the topic, my perspective, and what I deem important, is invariably skewed by this position as outsider. Previously, I considered interviewees important for the credibility they can add to a piece; now I see their importance in helping the writer determine where to place the weight.

Equally surprising to me, I am fonder than I thought I would be of the online format. Emailing of questions allows my interviewee time to consider my questions. I got truly extensive answers from the nutritionist and nutrition advocate I communicated with via email and in person respectively, and far less material from the food services director I spoke to over the phone. Without seeing her face to face, or giving her the time email allows for, it was difficult to judge whether the food services director was pausing because she’d completed her thought, or because she was in the process of gathering her thoughts. Wanting to break the silence, I would move on to another question. If I had it to do over again, I would try harder for either an in person interview or one conducted via the internet, because I think both of these mediums facilitate a more in-depth, more intimate conversation.

Finally, I am surprised by the amount of interviewees who ignored the questions I sent via email after agreeing to answer them. My non-responders, as I’ve begun calling them, beg an important question for me as researcher: when is it best to continue entreating the subject for an interview, and when is it best to cut one’s losses and focus on securing new subjects? I reverted to my instincts here. After several emails, I abandoned the idea of interviewing a local school principal and sought out the head of a “farm to school” lunch program instead. With my nutritionist, however, I decided to keep contacting her via follow-up emails until I received a definitive response either way. Fortunately, this paid off, and I did receive a great deal of helpful information from her eventually. I’m looking forward to weaving the information from all of my interviewees into my article.

When we espouse Syverson’s view, culpability becomes more grey than black and white.  I wanted to hold a friend’s grandmother accountable recently when she made a blatantly racist remark in front of my African American classmate, but this classmate reminded me that the grandmother is a product of the flawed thinking of her generation.  When a man grabs parts of my body on the dance floor at a bar, I want to hold him accountable, but I have to remember that he has been raised at a time when men are fed degrading image after degrading image of women in the media.  If one person cannot claim all credit for an insightful book or a thought-provoking painting, then how can one person be held responsible for a discriminatory mentailty or hurtful remark?

However, I’ve come to realize that people tend to feel more guilty about blowing off an in-person meeting than a set of questions waiting in their inbox.  Even though two of my interviewees have agreed (on more than one occasion) to offer their perspectives for my article via email, I have continually had to hound them for the follow through.  I’ve sent emails and twitter messages, using both a polite and apologetic tone, and a more urgent one.  Nothing has seemed to work with these two particular subjects.  In my last email, I even let my interviewee of the hook, saying that if things had changed and he no longer has the time, I understand, but I would very much appreciate him letting me know so that I can plan around this.  Still no response.

I’m still deciding when the situation calls for an even greater beseeching, and when I should cut my losses and seek out more sincere interviewees.  Fortunately, I’ve been in contact with other individuals whose voices will contribute a great deal to the article, but it doesn’t change the fact that some of my subjects have been giving me the journalism blues this week!  Here’s to making a bit more headway with a couple new interviewees in the upcoming days!

In this interview, we see images of Michelle Obama working on the White House vegetable garden.  The planting of this garden is an important step, as children are now so disconnected from real food.  With less time for working parents to cook at home and fried finger foods being served in schools, how are children supposed to know that real food does not come in a bag, but from the ground? The First Lady’s garden is very much a statement on the importance of reconnecting with our food.

The first lady also makes the point in this interview that small changes are all it takes for big improvements.  The problem, I believe, is that small changes take time, and time is a hot commodity in our instant gratification society.  (Comcast commercials feature a turtle couple, “the Slowsys,” to poke fun at dial-up internet connections, pizzas are free if it takes longer than thirty minutes to deliver them, and even our banks have drive-through window options!)  But with our health, we have to accept that the right way is not always the speedy way.

The Coke company has been extremely successful in its own marketing endeavors – so successful, in fact, product enthusiasts have begun doing the marketing for Coke.  Last year, a couple of twenty-something men not affiliated with Coke, set up a Facebook page all about the soda.  Within just a few weeks, the page hit 75,000 fans, prompting Facebook administrators to approach Coke executives about managing the page.  Coke declined to take it over, however.  The company agreed only to co-manage, speaking to a trend amongst big name brands toward relinquishing some control in order to promote a desired “for the people, of the people” image.  Today, with 3,365,220 fans, the page is second in popularity only to Barack Obama’s.  It’s intriguing to think about what decisions such companies are making that effect our thinking…and the thinking of our children…not just about whether or not a product tastes good or bad, but about how the company itself makes us feel.

President Obama’s plan to eliminate junk food in American cafeterias has been met with a great deal of opposition. Why do you think this is? Will eliminating the sale of unhealthy a la carte and vending machine options result in a loss of revenue necessary for purchasing uniforms and other essentials? Or are these foods merely competing with the National School Lunch options?

When I was attending Middle, I remember a great deal of attention being paid to nutrition in health classes. What do you believe, if anything is the responsibility of the school in combating the obesity epidemic among American youth? What initiatives has Middle Township High taken in advocating for balanced diets and/or healthy lifestyles?

Obama’s plan to allot $1billion more per year over the next ten years to school lunch programs is stirring controversy. Several grassroots organizations see it as progress, while others argue that this will allow for a mere twenty cent hike per student lunch. As a school principal, where do you stand? Is this a step in the right direction?

What is your stance on marketing to children in schools? Is the promotion of brand name products on school grounds within the power of the administration to control? Is it even ethical to do so in a free-market economy? In your opinion, what role does Channel One play in influencing student choices?

Is it possible that media education is just as important as nutrition education, so that students can learn to interpret the marketing which targets them specifically?

How do you respond to those who push for the elimination of soda machines on school grounds, arguing that children were never meant to fund their own education with their pocket-change?

The hormones in our meat and dairy products have come under fire recently. It’s been suggested that these hormones are bringing on precocious puberty in kids as young as eight. From the perspective of a school official, is this cause for concern? Do you believe that additives in food may be a culprit in behavioral disorders, such as ADD?

High school students are often allotted less than a half an hour for lunch. Do you believe that lecturing on the important role our food plays, and then asking students to eat a hurried meal more conducive to ‘fast’ food options, sends a contradictory message?

Could the cafeteria environment itself (atmospherics including lighting, noise, etc.) be affecting food choices or increasing consumption? I know Middle underwent some renovations about seven years ago. Was this issue taken into consideration when designing the new cafeteria?

Do you think changes are necessary?

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

The first time I realized just how ingrained within my own thought collective I am, I was in college.  I was taking a class on African culture, in which the professor discussed the process of female genital mutilation practiced by some African tribal communities.  My gut reaction was abhorrence.  I was appalled that there exists communities in which this tradition is not considered despicable but, rather, a right of passage for young women.  A classmate of mine told me to calm down, that many of our western practices probably seem just as foreign and just as heinous to the women of these tribes.  When I began to think about it, I started to see that he was right.  Women in America inject our skin with Botox needles and our lips with collagen.  We have our chests sliced open to insert artificial products like silicon filled sacks (one in ten of which burst!).  And, what’s most absurd, literally hundreds of girls voluntarily replace meals with coffee and bubble gum as a type of starvation diet.  In the richest country in the world, in a world where sixteen people die of starvation every minute, we deprive ourselves of food.  And, tribes in Africa may mutilate the female body, but this society idolizes it, obsesses over it, and often degrades it in a way that may be considered just as abhorrent, just as absurd.

We begin to justify as right facts that arise within our own thought collective just by virute of their having arisen within our own thought collective, and we begin to denounce facts that arise within other thought collective simply by virtue of their having arisen outside of our own.  This can be dangerous.  As Fleck suggest, “Each must equally withdraw his own individuality into the shadow, as it were, in the service of the common ideal.”

The reason things talk is two-fold – we project our connotations onto them, and we filture what we see in them through the lens of our experience.  Personifiying things, by ascribing to them a “voice,” speaks to just how much meaning we project onto certain inatimate objects.  I would go so far as to say that things speak not merely because they tell a story, but because they tell our stories long after we’re gone.  In my grandfather’s coffin, for example, my family placed his prized harmonica.  The harmonica isn’t just a nostalgic symbol for me.  When I hear the instrument today, I hear the story of my grandfather.  It is for this reason, I think, that people are so hungry for “tongues in trees and books in brooks.”  It isn’t so much about the legacy of the thing, as it is about our own legacy.

Secondly, I want to explore why, with all the knowledge surrounding the link between diet and health in this country, change to inadequate school menus has been so slow-going.  What are the cultural, political, and economic factors at play?  Under this umbrella, I am particularly interested in the issue of marketing to children in schools.  Should the government have the power to regulate advertising to kids in a free market economy?  Does this cross ethical boundaries, or is it not stepping in that crosses such a boundary?

I also want to explore the social conventions surrounding meal time.  I want to know where my subjects stand on issues not simply concerning what we eat, but the way in which we eat it.  Is it possible that environment and atmospherics affect a child’s food choices?  Is it possible that the problem does not rest entirely with the food itself?

Ultimately, I want to flesh out the idea of responsibility.  What is the responsibility of the school in feeding our children and in educating them about nutrition?   How important is it, if at all, for the lay person to be an advocate for proper nutrition?  Who is currently responsible for setting guidlelines in schools, and who should be?

My first interview subject will be Patricia, the head of food services at Ocean Academy in Cape May County, New Jersey.  Patricia will be important to my article because she will provide me with an insider’s perspective.  She acts as a type of liason between government and school, and will highlight the obstacles, if any, to operating within the guidelines of the National School Lunch Program.  She will shed light on the debate over competitive foods, and, perhaps most importantly, she will know how the children she interacts with on a daily basis respond to differnt food options.  I met Patricia through a friend, who works at Ocean Academy.  The interview will take place at Ocean Academy at a date to be determined this week.

My second interview will be with Ted Pugliese, principal of Middle Township High School in Cape May County, New Jersey.  Because I went to this high school myself, I am familiar with the cafeteria setting here.  I emailed Mr. Pugliese with questions, and am hoping that he will respond via email, or agree to meet with me at his convenience.  I am hoping that he will allow me to observe a lunch period or two, where I can ask general questions of the students about their food choices and their thoughts on the above issues.  Mr. Pugliese will be important because he will provide me with the administrative perspective.  He will have an understanding of the economic issues facing schools, and the difficulty, if any, that arises from trying to be both an advocate for education and nutrition.

Thirdly, I will interview Lucas Manteca, the executive chef of the Ebbitt Room restaurant in Cape May, New Jersey.  I first met Lucas four years ago when I started working for him.  As the owner of a seafood shack style restaurant at the Jersey shore and a 40 seat BYO in Philadelphia, Lucas allows only real ingredients into his dishes.  He is an advocate for sustainable dining and the slow-food movement.   Lucas will be important to my article because, as a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, he knows about food, and the importance of dining as opposed to feeding.   As the father of a one and half year old daughter who just started pre-school, he will also provide me with the perspective of a conscientous parent.   The interview will take place at his house on the 12th of March.

Also, I will interview Ann, editor of the School Food Talk website.   Ann serves as the director of nutrition services for the Berkeley Unified School District in California, but she strives to bring organic lunches to children all over the country.  She co-authored Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children, and she is the owner of the F3 (Food Family and Farming) Foundation.  Finally, “she is a former Kellog Food and Society Policy Fellow,a past president of Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, and a former member of the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board.”  I contacted her via Twitter, and will conduct an interview via the phone.  Ann will be important to my article because she is up to date on all the current trends in school nutrition.  She will enlighten me on the plethora of grassroots movements within the nutritional regime, as well as current governmental strides.

Finally, I will interview Mara, a nutritionist at the yoga studio where I take classes in Cape May Court House, New Jersey.  Mara will provide me with knowledge about the physical, emotional, and mental ailments that can afflict a child who eats an imbalanced diet.  As the mother of four, she will also provide that invaluable parental perspective.  The interview will take place at the wellness studio at a date to be determined.