My mother and father and their four children--two girls and two boys--all ate the same food. There were no food clashes; there was peace and time for what our parents wanted us to discuss, inform, and question regarding our schooling and readings.
Meaningful table dinners with family, instead of everybody eating something different in their rooms in front of computer screens, self-isolating as a virus. To his mother, "whether at breakfast, lunch, or supper--was a daily occasion for education, for finding out what was on our minds, for recounting traditions of food, culture, and kinship in Lebanon, where she and my father were born."
His father, who ran the family business, the Highland Arms Restaurant, and liked to treat his kids to his handmade ice cream ("When the ice cream was ready, we would fill our bowls and lap it up happily"), had a complementary philosophy about the family dining experience. But still they had table expectations that would be considered challenging today. Nader notes,
Mother knew that at the kitchen table she had our undivided attention. When we came home from our nearby schools for lunch, she would relate historic sagas, like the tales of Joan of Arc. She never read to us, preferring to rely on her memory to tell stories and recite Arabic poetry, watching the expressions on our faces closely. Coming from a vibrant oral tradition in Lebanon, she had an endless treasure trove of recollections.
Nobody said Shut Up, nobody ever got mal and started a foof fight, and look how Ralph has turned out.
I find myself musing again, thinking of all the Eid fast breaks, Easter dinners, and seders. My Dinner with Andre. The Woody Allen flicks featuring families fighting, but with 'love'. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. The discussions. And I'm thinking of Nader at the first Thanksgiving dinner telling a Wampanoag guest, quietly, that he had mouse turd in his pumpkin pie, just to see the look in his eye, and it hasn't stopped.
Eric stops my musing, asking Nader if there are ways in which food can be used to bring together people "separated by politics and by borders". Nader is generous and expansive in his reply:
It's pretty well known that wherever you have people who disagree politically -- but boy do they like certain ethnic food -- and you get them around a table and they start talking about things that are not dividing them, they broaden their vistas and their horizons and see each other as human beings instead of stereotyped people.
He notes this is exactly the kind of togetherness the ruling class hates and seeks to destroy. He continues, passing around water, with: "a few years ago I wrote about a left-right alliance. I came up with about 25 major changes and redirections in this country that are supported by liberals and conservatives."
He tells Eric and Laila, struggling to figure out how to vote in a two-evil election: "Vote your conscience in swing states," Nader advises. He owns that the current two-party set-up is a mess, where "49% unhappy after every presidential election". He wonders "why the Greens fare so poorly when they are the People's party", with all the popular solutions for health, education and welfare issues. And though he doesn't elaborate, he "suggests that America adopt an electoral system" similar to Ireland's, which has a preferential voting system.
They ask him what they can do as new and first-time voters to prepare for an election. He recommends that they read William Greider's Who Will Tell the People? Then he gives the podcast duo a portrait of an activist as a young person. He says,
Young people need to realize that the ten greatest social-justice victories in our country were initiated by a handful of people [and] such people shared three qualities:
1. They were serious people.
2. They knew what they were talking about.
3. They represented majority public opinion.
There's a pause during which my glass is refilled, and then to other topics.
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