Welcome to The Nature of Seeds
I am a political theorist, recently retired from teaching and the other privileges and duties of academic life. I have loved my students and their curious minds from the core of my soul, and now that they are no longer a daily part of my life, I find myself pondering a magically flexible calendar with awe. I brew the beans, I cheerily rub my hands together, and I zero in on writing about my primary research project of the past 10 years: the historic shift surrounding seed sovereignty and the ownership of plant genetics. There is so much at stake, so much to figure out, and so many stories to tell.
This Substack is a way for me to share and invite your feedback on smaller bits of the project through essays and stories about the seeds, seed-savers, activists, policymakers, and researchers I’ve listened to and learned from all over the world. This Substack is a place for other kinds of storytelling, too—about a place I love in the border area between the “big woods” and the “prairie pothole” regions in rural Minnesota, what I’ve learned as a lifelong gardener, food harvester, and occasional small-scale farmer, how I have stepped my way through cherished and challenging roles as a granddaughter and grandmother, as a neighbor and friend, as a committed member of society who likes to spend a great deal of time alone. I want to shine my literary flashlight on some creative, crucial environmental and community projects that deserve our attention. Current events will pop in and out, as I’m also a former journalist who still has printer’s ink in her veins, added to decades of professional and informal discussions of politics. I see all of this as territory for brief essays and stories that help me make sense of seed ownership, rural life, farming/gardening, and understandings of us and this land. I hope that some of you will find these posts entertaining, intriguing, and/or helpful and that, with care and spirit, we can enjoy wrestling together with what it means.
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