Doorknobs & BodyPaint Archives
Guides & Prompts
from Issue 74 Earth Day
DORSAL CONTEST:
Bara Swain, editor
Barbara Kingsolver vowed that she and her family would
only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to
live without it. For one year, the rural life that they led is revealed
in her part memoir, part journalistic investigation, ABOUT ANIMAL, VEGETABLE,
MIRACLE. Barbara Kingsolver and her coauthors
unearth the secret lives of vegetables and the unexpected satisfactions of
knowing their food producers — and sometimes their dinner — on a first-name
basis.
Yard art is an earnest
form of self-expression here. Autumn, with its blended undertones of “joyful
harvest” and “Trick-or-Treat kitsch,” brings out the best and worst on the
front lawns: colorful displays of chrysanthemums and gourds. A large round hay
bale with someone’s legs hanging out of its middle. (A pair of jeans and boots
stuffed with newspaper, I can only hope; we’ll call it a farm safety reminder.)
One common theme runs through all these dioramas, and that is the venerable
pumpkin. They were lined up in rows, burnished and proud and conspicuous, the
big brass buttons on the uniform of our village. On the drive home from our
morning’s errands we even passed a pumpkin field where an old man and a younger
one worked together to harvest their crop, passing up the orange globes and
stacking them on the truck bed to haul to market. We’d driven right into a
Norman Rockwell painting.
In 450 words or less, write a story that reveals your attitude toward food, cooking or food culture.
Write a story and post it in comments or send it to the Cairo Room at doorknobsandbodypaint@gmail.com
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