potato, e-

Strokestown national famine museum, Co. Roscommon, Ireland, gives a strange sense of the history of food and people.

"The Irish National Famine Museum uses original documents and letters relating to the years of the famine on the Strokestown Park Estate to explain the history of the Great Irish Famine and to draw parallels with the occurrence of famine throughout the world today." -- http://www.gardensireland.com/strokestown-park.html

"The Great Irish famine of the 1840's is now regarded as the single greatest social disaster of 19th century Europe. Between 1845 and 1850, when blight devastated the potato crop, in excess of two million people - almost one-quarter of the entire population - either died or emigrated. The Famine Museum is located in the original Stable Yards of Strokestown Park House. It was designed to commemorate the history of The Great Irish Famine of the 1840's and in some way to balance the history of the 'Big House'. Whereas the landlord class had the resources to leave an indelible mark on the landscape, the Irish tenants lived in poverty and nothing of a physical nature has survived to commemorate their lives. The Famine Museum uses the unique documents that were discovered in the estate office, dealing with the administration of the estate during the tenure of the Mahon family. This collection includes many haunting pleas from starving tenants on the estate and the response they received. The Famine Museum at Strokestown Park, Strokestown, Co. Roscommon, Ireland is twinned with Grosse Ile and the Irish Memorial National Historic Site, Grosse Ile, Quebec, Canada. Over 5,500 Irish people who emigrated during the famine years are buried in mass graves at Grosse Ile. The Museum also has a strong educational focus and seeks to create a greater awareness of the horrors of contemporary famine by demonstrating the link between the causes of the Great Irish Famine of the 1840's and the ongoing spectacle of famine in the developing world today. The Famine Museum was opened in 1994 by the then President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and she said 'More than anything else, this Famine Museum shows us that history is not about power or triumph nearly so often as it is about suffering and vulnerability'." --http://www.strokestownpark.ie/museum.html

Strokestown Park House Garden & Famine Museum,
Strokestown,
Co. Roscommon

Tel: +353 71 9633013 Fax: +353 71 9633712
Email: info@strokestownpark.ie
Web Site: www.strokestownpark.ie

After visiting this place, and circumambulating the national famine memorial at the foot of Croagh Patrick, I felt drawn to re-read "Desire: Control / Plant: Potato", Chapter 4 in The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan (Random House, 2001) which gives the writer's view of the fatal dependency of the Irish country people on one crop, indeed one variety of one crop, for survival -- and the biological and political-economic systems that led to millions in starvation and further thousands in exile or desperate poverty. Michael Pollan gives the estimate that due to the cultivation of the potato the population of Ireland had risen from 3 to 8 million in 100 years. Now it is around 5.1m including 400k newly arrived Eastern Europeans.

The author's website www.michaelpollan.com seems to be down - read an interview with him in Grist: Environmental News and Commentary http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/31/roberts/

From this grim reading it was a pleasure to turn to the 2007 Catalog of Bountiful Gardens www.bountifulgardens.org and contemplate fruits of Ecology Action initiatives that stretch back past the Declaration of Interdependence (I got my copy at the clean water conference in Oakland municipal auditorium on New Year's Eve, 1968 - a conference convened by Paul DeFalco, regional administrator of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration & later of the Environmental Protection Agency.) And then to move on to a book that acknowledges the contributions of among others Steve Trombulak - who recruited me into Troop 377 BSA Belmont CA around 1967 - a Middlebury College professor of biology and environmental studies (http://community.middlebury.edu/~trombula/Trombulak.html) best known to Google for "All I ever really needed to know I learned in The Lord of the Rings" (http://community.middlebury.edu/~trombula/lotr_rules.htm)

The book that acknowledges Steve is Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks by Bill McKibben (Crown Journeys, 2005) which encourages contemplation of place - our place on earth, our place with earth. The Christian Century recently printed an issue with the cover article "Design in Nature"; I think we still need to think about Design WITH Nature (a la Ian McHarg's book of that title). Bill McKibben walked 200 miles to get 70 miles as the crow flies, from his Ripton VT home to his other house deep in the Adirondacks. Along the way he meets and talks with various deep ecologist, local farmers, and activists, and ruminates about themes of deep ecology as well as such slogans as "Eat Locally, Act Neighborly". Apparently "local" is the new "organic" at least upstate.....

If nothing else you can look up all the writers he recommends, from John Muir (our first north american celtic pilgrim and theologian of place) to Wendell Berry and Edward Abbey and Gary Snyder.