Alice Waters: Don’t Just Walk On By!

By Shlomo  Maital     

                Watersedible schoolyard

 

 Alice Waters is the founder of the iconic Berkeley, CA. restaurant, Chez Panisse, where you get wonderful, simple organic food beautifully cooked,  and the author of the book The Art of Simple Food. Here is a small story that perhaps can inspire us.

   On her way to her restaurant, each day, Alice passed a school, Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.  It looked neglected.  She mentioned this to a local newspaper.  The principal Neil Smith read this and reached out to Waters. Waters went to see Smith. On the spot, off the top of her head, she came up with the Edible Schoolyard project.  “I saw this huge expanse of land (school grounds) and then this unused mess of a cafeteria, and I told Neil, ‘We have to grow food here, serve the food in free, healthy school lunches, and then the kids can be involved in the cooking.” 

   The result:  An asphalt wasteland was converted into the first Edible Schoolyard. 

   Today:  2,000 schools in all 50 states of the United States, and 29 other countries, are following Waters’ original model!

   Lesson:  Don’t just walk on by.   Do something. Act.   Creative thought is wonderful. Creative thought without action is like love without sex. 

    Thanks Alice!