Timlynn Babitsky's blog

Great Kids Farm of Baltimore

Timlynn Babitsky — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 19:35:19 +0000

As a life-long educator and former middle school teacher, the Great Kids Farm program of Baltimore City Public Schools has me jumping up and down with excitement -- ready to pack my bags and move. Here’s why.

City Schools’ Food Service Director, Tony Geraci, discovered in 2008 that City Schools owned a 33 acre farm that was barely being used. Concerned about rising obesity in kids and their lack of connection to the food they eat, Tony envisioned using that property as a farm and educational center where kids could connect deeply to the sources of their food. The Great Kids Farm was launched as the school system's farm-to-school food reform program.

Starting in November 2008, it took a lot of hard work to transform that overgrown reality into the Great Kids Farm Tony envisioned. Thousands of kids, working side-by-side with skilled volunteers, spent hundreds of hours pulling weeds, preparing planting beds, and building beehives. Money to make the work possible came from financial supporters, family and friends.

In less than a year, “three acres were under cultivation, bees were buzzing, chickens were laying eggs, fruit trees were taking root, greenhouses were overflowing with plants and thousands of worms were creating compost. Since then, these crops and animal populations have continued to grow, reaching more and more children, and inspiring more and more volunteers and donors to get involved.”

The Great Kids Farm program teaches children a great deal about farming; they cultivate organic fruits and vegetables year-round. It prepares students for agricultural, culinary, and environmental careers; they learn first-hand how food on the farm and food on the table are deeply connected. And they learn that good food is good business; they run a CSA ($500 for 24 weeks of produce), supply local restaurants, and sell at farmers’ markets.

Kudos to the City of Baltimore and their Great Kids Farm program!

Section:

Social Networks

Games People Played

Timlynn Babitsky — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 05:23:44 +0000

Much as we’d like to think we humans have always had a major fun streak, I was surprised to find that we didn’t get our game on until many millennia after the ascent of man. It took our early gene pool nearly 200,000 years to figure out that life could be more than just kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.

The first real signs of human games appeared around 6,000 B. C. Stones and sticks were used in various forms of “play” to foretell the future or to chat with the gods. Rudimentary communities drew closer together to face the wrath or needs of their god(s), and the events foretold that might befall them.

Once we got the idea that the future might be predictable, gambling games weren’t far behind. According to Gambling Planet, dice-like stones and bones have been found that date back to 6,000 B. C. Greek gods played dice; early Indians played dice; and Egyptian hieroglyphs suggest rules and regulations for ancient dice games.

Native Americans, Aztecs, Mayas, Polynesians, Eskimos, and sub-Saharan Africans used plum stones, peach pits, pebbles, seeds, bones, deer horn, pottery, walnut shells, beaver teeth, and seashells to play dice games. (Gambling Origins)

“By 3000 B.C., early Chinese, European and Middle Eastern civilizations were gambling for fun and money.” (Gambling Planet)

Games were a part of everyday life in China by 1000 B.C. By 500 B. C. board games were common and civilizations around the world were regularly betting on fights and races between animals and between humans.

“The first Olympics, for example, were nothing more than a huge gambling enterprise” (Gambling Planet).

The Olympic games can be traced back to about 776 B. C. and continued on over 12 centuries. Although very different in many aspects from modern Olympics, the social/political goals of holding the games were about the same. Showcasing the superior strength, stamina, and skill of the youth of a particular place would certainly impress potential allies and enemies alike. The wins and losses in those early games most likely influenced who supported whom on what invasion campaign.

As a student of social networks, it appears that the earliest games helped to draw people together into rudimentary communities and to develop ties within and between those groups.

What about children’s games? According to the Kidipede website (among many others), ball games have been known for thousands of years. Marbles, hoops and sticks, tag, and running and jumping contests are very old children’s games.

Throwing balls and shooting marbles, running fast and jumping high were all survival skills one had to learn young and perfect quickly or be killed, captured, or eaten. Even hopscotch seems to have started out as a training exercise for the Roman Army.

When children compete with each other to learn survival skills is this really a game? Does every game we engage in teach us something we need to know to survive or thrive in the world at that time? This is an issue we’ll talk about more in our upcoming post on video games.

There is a whole body of research on “what is a game” and “what is play.” The crucial life lessons learned in children’s game play have been well documented in the field of psychology.

I’ll leave these aside for your investigation. My goal is to focus on games as social structuring activities that connect one person to another, forming simple connections into groups and networks. I am particularly interested in how social structuring appears to be changing as technology allows us to play complex games with others we never see or meet.

Confession of a Game Play Addict

Timlynn Babitsky — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:30:14 +0000

Ok, I admit it! I’m a virtual farm game junkie. In less than a year I’ve polished my planting/sowing/selling skills to become a Fearless Plower (level 52) at SlashKey's Farm Town and an ever-busy Soil Sage (level 83) at Zynga's Farmville.

I stay up late and get up early making sure that my crops haven’t withered or that I’ve not let my friends down in our joint venture co-ops. I absolutely love to play, but I also study the underlying models on which these two game systems flourish.

In the mid-80s Jim and I met in the math social science graduate program at UC Irvine. We were both immersed in the study of what today would be called social network theory – what is a group, how does it form, expand, thrive, shrink, and die. In those days focus was on static “snapshots” of one point in time and what that moment told us about group structure measurements.

It was social network structure data that FORTRAN programs on PDP-11 or Sigma 7 mainframes would crank through so you could then come up with group structure insights. But, for both Jim and me, it was really just a fleeting moment captured. We were closet students of process modeling of social networks evolving over time.

The exciting thing about social networks is that they are living – constantly changing – even as you capture one moment and study it, that network has already changed. Capturing that Big Dynamic Network and understanding what accelerates or hinders its dynamic social processes - THAT was the exciting aspect of social networks that we believed was REALLY “cool” (ok I’m dating myself with that one).

Which brings me back to Farm Town and Farmville and the evolution of games in general into virtual gaming today – to be covered by my foray into a Games People Play series of blog posts coming up here over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned…it’s going to be fun!

Section:

Social Networks

USDA Research on Local Food Supply Chains

Timlynn Babitsky — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:34:14 +0000

"Comparing the Structure, Size, and Performance of Local and Mainstream Food Supply Chains." is the latest and arguably the most important recent publication by the USDA's Economic Research Service. A report summary and the full report are are freely available in PDF format on the USDA ERS website.

Everyone... we repeat, everyone interested and participating in the local food movement – particularly farmers and local food supply chain processors and aggregators like the good folks at Kalona Organics and Local Harvest Supply – should grab a copy and mine it for the valuable insights and stats-rich information. But perhaps most importantly, we should pay attention to the subtle but provocative call to arms slipped in on page 69, "Priorities of Future Research." The phrase 'priorities for future research' is economic research lingo that can be translated to 'issues we practitioners need to address' and 'opportunities for us to bring creative solutions' to the marketplace. We'll have many more thoughts upon further reflection on this important contribution to the local food movement.

Our friend Andy Larson, ISU Extension expert focused on Small Farm Sustainability, brought this recent publication to our attention. Thanks, Andy!

For additional and Iowa-specific information, download the freely available published studies on local food supply chains by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. And don't hesitate to drop by the Center's Value Chain Partnerships website.

Section:

Ideas