The sort of sidewalk message I pass on the way to work. I love Brooklyn.
Someone once asked me if I am like a shark—if I stop moving, will I die? Which is to say, I have never been one for being idle. But this time, I may have outdone myself. Right now, I am simultaneously a full-time student and a full-time employee. Score, I have created a monstrosity that will truly screw with BLS unemployment statistics.
Photo: E. Bennett
It’s internship season here at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, and everyone is abuzz with plans for the near-future and exit strategies post-graduation. Our last classes will take place on March 4th, at which point we will each set off on two-month long internships of our own design. These can take place anywhere in the world (though you have to fund your own food and housing), and can take a variety of forms, from independent research to a structured corporate program. At the end of the two months, we must turn in a thesis, which is usually (but not always) related to your experiences on internship. Graduation is set for May 13th, and then we officially become UNISG alumni.
Clockwise: aubergine growing in the garden; Barbialla Nuova’s lake; a spider makes its home amidst the blackberry brambles; drawing on the car’s dusty rear window for kids by kids
Over the last couple weeks while WWOOFing, I weeded a pumpkin patch, staked tomatoes, cleaned and revitalized a garden bed, created and turned compost piles, sanded and painted wood beams, and helped measure and construct a pergola. All these were activities I’d never done before. They were only the tip of the iceberg in what I learned while in Tuscany.
My dad has quite a lot of handyman experience (he has built swimming pools, renovated houses, fixes cars) but with the recalcitrance and aversion of children to anything their parents do, I never really bothered paying much attention, and so my brother was the one who learned the ins ands outs of fixing a washing machine. Just as I was ruing my inability to solder stuff though, Ken announced that I’d be helping him build a pergola, a porch-like extension to the Vallibonci house without the floor. Brilliant, now we’re cooking with power tools!
In case you’ve been living inside a subway tunnel, the internet has been abuzz this summer with the Double Rainbow guy, who rose to fame after his YouTube video freak-out at seeing a double rainbow went viral. You can cringe, laugh and cry with him as he goes to crazy town, shouting “OH MY GOD,” “WHOAAAA” and “What does it MEAN?!?” on camera.
In this interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Double Rainbow Dude “Bear” Vasquez claims not to have been on any drugs or other mind altering substances in this video (but not others). As it turns out, he runs a farm in Yosemite, and when Kimmel asks “And how do you get women to come up there?” Vasquez replies, “Um, a lot of them come through WWOOF, that’s Worldwide Organization of Organic Farms…actually today there’s seven European girls that are staying at my house right now.”
Barbialla Nuova farm
Have you ever been curious about what it’d be like to live on a farm? Want to travel to new places? Learn about healthy, sustainable agriculture? Interested in communing with nature and taking a break from the hectic pace of urban life? Does the idea of manual labor in exchange for food and shelter sound appealing? Then you might want to check out the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF).