Thanks for your comment. Examining one's feeling and actions about what we should or shouldn't be eating (and how they do or don't coincide) as well as assessing the information available to us about this topic is a full-time job! I hope that my article will have addressed some of the questions that readers have and some of the decisions they made every day.

Every time I think about changing my shopping and eating patterns so that they more closely reflect my values I end up having to go lie down with a cold compress across my forehead. It should be a topic that's simple and straighforward, but, so far at least, it's a challenging one for me. I know it's difficult for others as well because they tell me so, or they tell me it's so diffucult that they prefer to just not think about it.

I will say that when presented with easy substitutions or strategies, most people seem willing to take a little extra effort or pay a little more to do the more ethical or environmentally sound thing: it's when it comes to giving things up because there is not easy substitute that the questions and challenges become harder.

Nice handling of, yes, a complex topic. I admire the way you complicate the local vs. global binary opposition, which may, I fear, tend to be simplified in my writing. What you seem to be calling for is a more mindful, more knowing approach to eating, which is of course desperately need in these parts.

I do urge you to dig into what happened to all of that season-extension infrastructure in your area. What would it cost to bring it back? Can such an effort be a priority in the age of Iraq and (in your state) the Big Dig? Can it not be a priority in the age of global warming and failing farm economies? Also, as you're enjoying out-of-season tomatoes, ask around about what happened to local canneries.
Cheers,
Tom

Hi. Yes, I hope to interview the guy who wrote a history of local farms and farmers. I also talked to a friend who is a solar contractor about what it would take to bring back that many greenhouses in the area. He said that the technology wouldn't be much of an issue, but that there isn't a lot of undeveloped land left that can be used for local greenhouses. Still, once one gets a little bit further out of the city (I am in a "thickly settled" suburb) there would be room to build greenhouses and food would be a lot MORE local even if it weren't grown right in town. Maybe this is a project that we can get Deval Patrick, our new  tech-friendly governor-elect, to support.

In an aside, I recently read a letter of recommendation written by my great-grandfather's former employer (Lady Lyons of Croom House in Limmerick, Ireland) listing his gardening skills and one of the skills listed was "glass work." I didn't know if that meant glazing, blowing glass, or growing things in greenhouses. Does anyone know?

Interestingly, the letter also implored him to seek work in England rather than America. Lady Lyons wrote that "Young Irishmen are cannon fodder in America," because it was during the time of the Civil War. (We have really long generations in my family.) He tried England first, but left (I assume because of anti-Irish prejudice and inability to buy land) and came to the US, where he had a farm in Vineland, NJ. He also worked as a gardener in Central Park. Although he and I never met, I think of him and his journey to America whenever I walk through Central Park.