Arts
I had once gone to a wedding in upstate New York. After the ceremony, a dance, and the presentation of food, it was time for the speeches. The best man stood up and went to the microphone to say a little something about the groom,his brother. What he said, which I thought was poignant at the time, was that his brother above all else was nice. Nice is such a simple, overly spent word and, yet, I thought it was the best word to describe my friend. It is a quality that does not come and go, depending on who you are interacting with or what is happening around you, it is a part of you. As the speeches continued, I briefly zoned out and thought to myself, “Hmm...nope, I’m definitely not nice.” One of the great things about getting older is that, if you are wise enough, you can start to see patterns within your own life. One pattern that has dogged me since I was very young is a type of divisiveness that I create. As my husband once said, “Leanne, people either love you or hate you.” This fact, that every few years the later, gets smacked in my face is hard to swallow and as I get older I do try my best to avoid it. A quality that is as true to me as my friend’s niceness and the main cause of the divisiveness is a type of blatant honesty that I share. In recent years I’ve mitigated the fallout by choosing not to say anything at all. Unfortunately, my face betrays me more often than not, and folks can tell what I’m thinking regardless. People either hate my honesty or they love it. It is the same quality, but often comes with different reactions. It might seem like an odd, ill-thought segue to start talking about seaweed right now, for what does seaweed have to do with my divisiveness issues? What is divisive about seaweed? Heck, what do we even know about seaweed? Unless, you live in Asia or are of Asian ancestry, your connection to seaweed is probably pretty limited. A little Nori in your California sushi roll and that is probably it. At least that is what you think. Seaweed is actually pretty pervasive even in a North American diet. However, it is the fact that we aren’t fully aware of its presence or the names that it is hidden under that allows us to create a division that we aren’t really aware that we are creating. You might not know this but seaweed is in your chocolate milk. It’s in your toothpaste. It’s in your canned beans. Essentially, seaweed is the source of a few of our most used food additives. You might see the words carrageenan, agar, or monosodium glutamate (yes, folks, that’s MSG). All derived or originally derived from seaweed. In some food circles, these additives are put on a big blackboard and labeled, “Watch out, that shit’s bad for you.” On the other side of the spectrum, seaweed, like Chlorella or Spirulina, are bottled up in vitamin capsules and presented as a wondrous super food that will be your source for boundless energy. It will prevent inflammation, while at the same time your seaweed derived additives will cause inflammation. Supposedly, it can be both at the same time, and perhaps it can. When you manipulate food anything can happen. This week’s episode Seaweed: A Complicated Relationship you didn’t know you had. There is something called the Coastal Route Theory, which is basically a theory that explains how humans first arrived in the Americas during the last Ice Age. In school, when it was the 90's and I was young, naive, and full of dreams I learned about the Bering Land Bridge Theory, which suggested the Americas was populated by folks walking from Russia to Alaska. Well, the Coastal Route Theory suggests that South America and Western United States was first populated by Southeast Asians or Polynesians who hopscotched their way across the pacific ocean on boat, by either crossing south or north of the pacific. Along with the Coastal Route Theory is another theory called the Kelp Highway Hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that forests made of kelp and other coastal ecosystems...