My interview was with Rozanne Adanto, supervisor of the Villa-Parke Community Center/Garden in Pasadena who retired at the end of March. Before moving on to ‘bigger and better’ adventures and fun - and through it all, acting as a mentor to others -, she squeezed in an meeting with me at her ow vacant office at the City-owned Center.
Link to article articulating the need for urban farming in Northwest Pasadena: http://centerforhealthreporting.org/blog/garden-pasadenas-food-desert-may-help-battle-diabetes
Link to Center’s website: http://cityofpasadena.net/HumanServices/VillaParke_Community_Center/
Rozanne’s reflection was motivational…
Link to the interview’s recording: https://soundcloud.com/robert-machuca-1/fine-tuning-urban-farming-fourth-interview-with-rozanne-adanto
1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?
- I have learned how to phrase a question posed in an interview as though it were another twist to the plot that is the interview. Since we humans are hardwired to think of our lives forming themselves into the likeness of a story, with a beginning and end, I now ask questions within an interview as though they mirror chapters to a book and their page-turning twists. I have also learned to exploit the intrigue and excitement aroused in the interviewee as they digest their thoughts upon the question at hand, and its relation to their own experiences. Like an author, I love picturing urban farming as made possible through the character development of certain key players like Rozanne Adanto and Cathy Morrison.
2. How will what I learned affect my final lesson?
- I hope to impart the urgency in treating urban farming more of a necessary policy than a trend to my audience through disclosing their role to play in urban farming’s unfolding. Like within a Shakespearean drama, the actions of my audience are relevant to the possibility of urban farming as a staple of everyday life. Like within such a drama, there is a lesson to be learned that is so simple and yet so unrealized, a lesson that can be respected through establishment of community gardens and the like. Our food system must be thought of as unconventional, and making this the goal of my audience will allow them to be as passionate as I am about the activism to be had - activism equivalent to the rising action of this generation’s story.
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