#the farm
When I was a kid my mom and I would walk up and down the country road we lived on, collecting wildflowers and other greenery to arrange when we got home. It didn’t matter the season, there was always something to find to brighten up the table. It’s been fun doing that around the farm lately. June sure is a beautiful month,
Post link
The Farm
by Joanne Ramos
At one day past my due date, I am currently in either the best or the worst position to review Joanne Ramos’ thought-provoking page-turner The Farm.
At the moment, the slightly-too-plausible premise of farming out pregnancies via pricey surrogacy does not seem so bad. Having endured morning sickness occurring all times of day that does not cease after 1st trimester, exhaustion tantamount to being hit repeatedly by a bus, never-ending constipation and pains in places I didn’t know existed, might I hire someone to trade places? Tell me where to VENMO.
And yet, in a way, this isn’t even what The Farm is about. The bookstore employee suggested it was like The Handmaid’s Tale, perhaps in an effort to warn my obviously gestating self that it might not be the best time to read it. In fact, it is only really like The Handmaid’s Tale in that there are pregnant women at its center.
It’s also not about the price of motherhood, the high-achieving women who are penalized at work for having children, nor about the fact that the US is the only developed country without paid maternity leave. These topics could have doubled the size of the book - and I would have gladly read more.
WhatThe Farm is about is far more personal and insidious - a sort of collective history and culpability woven into the fabric of the American flag - Betsy Ross stitching in her trinity kitchen all the while going blind.
The story follows Jane, a young Fiipina mother, trying to survive in NY. Her cousin presents her with an opportunity: interview at Golden Oaks, a resort-style surrogate facility, where the wealthiest clients pay top dollar to outsource their pregnancies. The facility provides comprehensive nutrition, weekly prenatal massages, yoga, wellness tracking and …alpacas. There she meets Reagan and Lisa, two caucasian “hosts,” who pull her into their orbit. With the payouts for healthy babies so huge, each “host” has her own reasons for signing up for 10 (yes, look up how long pregnancy actually is) months of incarceration, so to speak.
In addition to a brilliantly-paced speculative fiction thriller, what starts to unfold is a social commentary about opportunity, access, immigration, and skin tone. And by the end of the novel, as Jane marvels at her own brave smart daughter, I start to wonder about the American Dream - who has been duped and who is benefitting from doing the duping. We expect it to pay its dividends in one lifetime. Come “your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” not well,…three generations down the road. And when my own great-grandmother emigrated, gnawed family photo in hand, I wonder if she ever thought about three - and any day now, four - generations down the line, and where her sea voyage would lead.
And perhaps it’s not that the American Dream is dead - perhaps we just always thought it was free. What if it’s always been pricey? And the questions are: how much are you willing to sell?Andhow much are you willing to pay?
Let the bidding begin.
Post link
Moonassi - Dedicated To Robin Williams (Full Set at Farmo’s 08.12.2014)
The long-discussed spinoff series for Rainn Wilson's Office fixture Dwight Schrute is finally taking shape. TV Line posted a list of character descriptions for the new show, currently titled The Farm, and to be quite frank, it sounds pretty terrible. Call it Spinoff Skepticism or Joey Syndrome, but the idea of a Dwight-centric show already sounded pretty ludicrous, and the character list below does nothing to assuage my fears.
Here’s the known character list of The Farm, and writeups from TV Line. No word on whether Mose Schrute (Parks & Recreation showrunner Michael Schur) will have any involvement, though it seems doubtful he’ll be available for much more than a cameo given his commitments.
——————
FANNIE SCHRUTE | Attractive, urban and in her late 20s/early 30s, Dwight’s younger sister fled the Schrute farm life for Boston as soon as she could, and has had little to do with her roots for quite some time. Now divorced with one son, Fannie is “a bit of a pseudo-intellectual lefty” with an ironic sense of humor and a great heart.
JEB SCHRUTE | Dwight’s easygoing thirtysomething brother hasn’t done well in any of the career paths he’s followed – worm breeder and Bigfoot hunter among them — but has found some success with a pot farm. He’s got none of Dwight’s dedication or work ethic, but he has made an exercise video about things you can do with a knife and a canoe. (We like him already.)
CAMERON WHITMAN | Dwight’s smart and slightly weird 9-year-old nephew (Fannie’s son) is a cosmopolitan lad who nevertheless feels the pull of his Schrute heritage, especially when he’s around someone — his uncles, perhaps? — who can offer the fatherly guidance he lacks.
HEINRICH MANHEIM | The Schrute siblings’ great uncle is charming, greedy, manipulative… and just may have had to spend time in Argentina following World War II, thanks to his German National Socialist roots. Oh, and he vows to kill Dwight by the end of the first episode.
Post link
they/them
moments from a hike last summer at the farm.
[image description: four photos of op, a white person with long brown hair tied in a messy bun, wearing a tan baseball cap, grey tshirt, and dark grey cargo shorts. they have a green-brown backpack and are hiking through fields and forest. in the first and third photo they are walking away from the camera through the woods. in the second they stand in a field with their hair down, holding a white flower. in the fourth they are seated on a wooden bench before a pond, facing away from the camera. end image description.]
Post link
