As for this photo, I was particularly honored that my good friend Amy Wu was recruited to say nice things about me in presenting the award.

Being at the Rural Justice Summit, in a diverse and inclusive gathering with like-minded people, made me want to share it. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion have been a pillar of the work I do to create a better food system- for everyone. That won't change, whatever the rhetoric from certain quarters.

I'm thinking of uninstalling the Yahoo Mail and Facebook apps on my phone (and using the web-pages within a browser), because they both have AI "help" that you can't turn off, which says the stupidest, most useless things (and the web-pages don't have this!).

Let's give it the acronym it deserves: BWAHAHA

We had a really nice event. The crowd was almost half students. All of the films had someone in the room who could talk about the film. There were great conversations and ideas, and great connections made. I'm so happy with this inter-generational community building - and look forward to more.

Community Films

) Home Restaurant by Eda Benjakul (Peter Ruddock, film advisor)
) Farm Discovery - Forage by Anne Hamersky
) Worse Than Poop by Vanessa Warheit (Sven Thesen, film advisor)

Student Films

) Threads of Change by Brendan Giang, Emily Tang and Max Reiter
When Hunger Hits Home: The Fight Against Food Insecurity by Neva ) Bapna, Laila Joshi, & Sione Fusimalohi
) The Scopes Monkey Trial by Anjali Ambati and Uma Hemrajani

I'll offer a corollary: Since there is no plant that everywhere and at every time can be called a weed, there can be no such thing as weedkiller.

Therefore, any substance labeled "weedkiller" is really plant-intended poison (which may poison unintended plants, animals and humans by side-effect).

I want to re-center the definition of a "weed" (per Wikipedia):

"A weed is a plant considered undesirable in a particular situation, growing where it conflicts with human preferences, needs, or goals" or as I've seen in other situations: a plant that you don't want here, now.

We had a really nice book discussion on Sunday. It wasn't only on "what is a weed"", fixated as I seem to be on that question. We talked about working with and appreciating nature, urban foraging, cooking with "weeds and more.

I'm happy to say that it was a great conference. And particularly happy to report that Therese and I had a great audience for our opening session on Food Hubs. She and I will be talking more about that in the future.

Still from Farm Discovery by Anne Hamersky, one of our short films.