Clark goes to great lengths to capture the sound and the look of the dinners. This microphone is taped to the ceiling over the dinner table with special tape that won’t peel paint off. People have been very accomodating, letting Clark run around with a video camera. It takes about ten minutes for people to forget he is there. Then they say something wild, and they turn to Clark and say, “Erase that!” He won’t speak back to them. He justs smiles, then looks back through his camera. That is why you forget he is there, he doesn’t seem to speak English.

LOS LOMAS
Rebecca Thistlethwaite
Age 30
Occupation program manager for the non-profit organic farm ALBA
Agriculture and Land-based Training Association
“We provide marketing and technical assistance to minority farmers. We’ve helped over 500 in the last twenty years.”

Jim Dunlop
Age 36
Organic chicken Farmer
Ex marine
Winner of 1998 Turkey Testicle Festival “Biggest Pair” division in Turlock California.
Hero is Joel Salatin, author of Pastured Poultry Profits
“This guy is an amazing public speaker, he tied world politics, abortion, and chicken farming all together”

We drove up a muddy dirt road, and I had no idea what to do when I met a car coming down. There was no place to go, the RV really should only go in one direction, and that is of course straight ahead. The little gold Saturn put it in reverse and backed up the hill about twenty yards and pulled into a turnout. Mighty neighborly of him. We passed a stand of Douglas fir, a tree farm that was never harvested, and now thirty foot tall trees are lined up, like a mathematical forest, Christmas trees gone wild. The directions read, “Turn left at the mailbox on 79 Los Lomas road, head up the gravel past a horse ranch. Stay straight through an oak grove. (they assume I can identify an oak grove. Country people!) The driveway is the paved one on the right.” Parts of it were paved, and parts had run back down hill in chunks last winter when the rains came. But we found it just fine.

Rebecca was moseying in the yard, and told us her husband Jim was “doing the chicken chores.” The funny thing about leaving the city, everything people say in the country is astonishing. She could have told us Jim ran down to the store for cigarettes and it would have felt like we were in Arkansas, on a moonshine farm, and no one around here had heard of microwave ovens yet. The reality was both Jim and Rebecca had college degrees. Of course the internet connection was dial up, operating at a peak of 47 kps. They hitched two head of oxen to a combine to generate bandwidth. So the country is still a little slower than the financial district of S.F.

I will admit right here the documentation of this project is totally covered. I have a cameraman, a soundman, and a writer, and each one captures a different perspective. That is what makes this an art project, not a walkabout. A few photos and a page in a journal is the normal amount of documentation. I have to take this thing out of the realm of ordinary. How else can I bring the education back? I need to have a different perspective and by combing all three of my friends, along with my own, it becomes very rich.

“To be a farmer today requires a high level of education, I have my Master’s from UC Davis. It requires innovation and entrepreneurialism to make it work nowadays. Maybe in the past you could be stupid, but not anymore.”
Organic farming requires a lot of troubleshooting, since you can’t just spray poison on a problem, then dump fertilizer chemicals back down so something can grow again. During the rainy season fava beans are being grown on one field just to hold the soil in place, and in springtime, it will be turned under to feed the soil. Giant rolls of black plastic are not rolled out for weed/erosion control.

By being disconnected from your market, you don’t mind selling food or milk you wouldn’t personally consume to someone else. “Jim and I have read lots of stories about people afraid to eat the crops in their fields, and a dairy farmer said he had his own private stash of milk cows that he allowed to range on grass pasture and didn’t feed them the growth hormone RBGH. “

Spending time with organic farmers means a lot of talk about the personal relationship of food. These are people who don’t shop for an organic label; they buy food from a source they know. They are so involved in the food production end, they have seen personally “cage free” chicken farmers who just keep thousands of birds in a warehouse and cut the beaks off the birds so they don’t fight each other. The conditions are both heartbreaking and dangerous to the consumer. Jim has no problem killing chickens; it just means a paycheck to him. But he does worry about what he sells to the public. He hand guts the bird, instead of running it through a processor that will spread the intestines and feces all over the meat. This means he doesn’t have to dip his chickens in a chlorine bath to disinfect it. It means when you buy chicken from Jim, it doesn’t have that little absorbent towel underneath it to sop up the excess water from the chlorine bath. So now I have to look at supermarket chicken as bleached meat with dead feces bacteria totally covering it.

A lot of news comes from the AP wire. It is a subscription service most news outlets pay for. A story is written up by their journalists, and then sold to who ever wants it. Small towns and big cities have put it in their papers.

You wouldn’t believe what happens when your phone number is placed on the AP wire. Imagine if your home phone number was on CNN.com. You would have a lot of people calling. Here is a breakdown of the call frequency on my cell phone on Monday FEB 14th, 2005.

1:17
1:05
1:05
12:40
12:35
12:16
12:14
12:11

That’s the power of the AP. I love to hear my cell phone ring, everyone likes to be called, but this is crazy.

I have a feature on my cell that tells me where the call is coming from, and there were calls from Washington State and Washington DC, Texas, Canada, Maryland, Ohio, just all over the country. It really is something to have the whole country know about my little idea.

Short mail

Hi! My name is alex a. I think you are doing a great thing and I was wondering if you would have lunch with me in Iowa.

Good evening Mr. Horowitz. I read an article stating what you are doing, and would like to commend you for your services to humanity.

E-Mails:
+++ “u can stay here, I have an extra couch, and I can probably help you w/ a hundred bucks or so.” J. R. Dayton Florida
+++ “I’m not lonely or insane.” V.F. Vancouver B.C. Canada
+++ “We have a big house and can accommodate you if you would like to sleep in something other than the RV.”
A.L. Newark NY
+++ “With a house/mortgage and especially 2 little girls, that dream (of traveling) is on hold indefinitely, needless to say. But hey! What if one of these people were to come here?” P.H. Frederick MD

WHAT WE LEARNED

Brown eggs come from North American breeds

White eggs come from European breeds

Green eggs do exist, (I saw two of them) and they come from South American breeds like the Auracana

jim in the marines:

Dinner with Sakae

Sakae (pronounced like psychiatry, without the “tree”).
Owen
Bronson

Here was a sense of suburban community. The neighbor across the fence stands on his porch and hollers over about the good smell of dinner, Sakae in front of her stove hollers back a thanks and an invitation to come over and try it. The dog barks out front. The kids are doing homework.

A lonely RV, no bigger than a covered wagon, rolls up to the three bedroom home, and property values immediately dip. It only goes downhill, as the 100 foot extension cord is strung across the lawn in its safety orange glory, to give the travelers “shore power”. On the morning of day two, concerned neighbors are on the telephone, “One of them is sleeping on the lawn.” By the afternoon of the second day, the last offense has occurred, as wet towels are hung over the fence to dry. The white trash road show must be run out of town.

But seriously folks, it was a great time with this family. The only reason I slept on the lawn was because we sprung a gas leak, and the camper filled up with fumes. If I had known coyotes roamed the neighborhood after dark, I may have taken my chances with asphyxiation.

How did we get here? It was an email that started it.

“Marc, it is 6:25 a.m. My son won’t get into the shower. 7th grader (likes to sleep) my youngest son is still rolling around. My husband is trying to get to work, and the dog is outside barking. Even though she knows she isn’t supposed to… AND

I read about you with the Crate and Barrel catalogue, it is because of people like you I have a renewed hope in mankind. Both of my sons march to a different beat, aren’t afraid to express themselves, and are really funny. I hope they can learn to appreciate life and laugh the way you do.

Thank you for being a breath of fresh air.

Kind regards,

Sakae”

It is definitely a risk meeting strangers. Why do it? Why do people invite me into their homes
Sakae said, “I emailed my friends to invite them to a pot luck for you, and they all wanted to know why I was doing it. Then my son asked me, ‘Why do these guys want to leave home and meet strangers?’

There is risk on both sides, and that is part of the adventure.

She told me, “I hope someday, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the day after, but when they’re 18, 19 years old, and they want to take a chance on something, they’ll remember this.”

It’s nice to get to the age when you realize you can be an influence on someone. It also means you have to start paying attention to your actions. I haven’t been around young people much until this Dinner Tour. While in San Juan Bautista I said “F@%$” very loud in front of a little boy, about seven years old. I looked down and he had his palms together about heart level, like he was praying, and a giant grin on his face. “I meant to say, ‘Farrr….’” I said, looking down at him. He looked so happy to have caught me doing something he is not supposed to do. What a grin. Let’s hope this isn’t the only influence I have on the trip.

Sakae arranged a diverse group for her potluck. Many of them were strangers to each other, only linked through Sakae. She emailed them all the CNN.Com clip, then invited them to meet me.

“Does he know I’m Black?” One friend asked her.

“No. I didn’t fill out a form, he just wants to meet people.” Sakae said.

Sakae is half Japanese, half native American, and her husband is Black. Her neighbor is gay, and the shades of color at the pot luck were like a Benetton commercial. Is this important? Yes and no. In fact, not everyone present that night was comfortable with everyone else. But they were willing to give it a chance, step outside their boundaries.

“My friends have kids, and if as parents they give a stranger a chance, or someone of a different sexual orientation a chance, then that lesson is passed on to their kids.”

Renee, a happily married woman who brought her 13 year old son along whispered to me that it was probably boring to be there.
“We’re middle class. Middle class people are kind of all the same, even if they are Black or White. They have stressful jobs, kids, car payments. That’s all they can talk about.”

In a way that is true. But unfortunately, I know plenty of middle class people who still have plenty of hate for other races, genders, and sexualities. That is part of why it was nice to have dinner there. People were very normal, they do want similar things: smart kids, good friends, a job they like, a loving spouse. Sakae was presenting me with a great example of how much people do have in common, how a complete community can be built.

One woman told me she was glad she came, although she wasn’t sure what was going to happen when she arrived. She ended up having a great time.

“Most people would rather watch t.v. than meet new people,” Tammy, Sakae’s best friend, said.

That took some thought to understand. Why would someone rather be alone than out being social? Maybe they’re tired from work, and just want to decompress. Could it be possible our work ethic and the lack of fulfilling work drives us to be couch potatoes? Coming home and eating in front of the t.v. is easier than joining a book club, or a Victrola society. If, instead, people had jobs they loved, wouldn’t they want to come home and share their energy, share their discoveries? The way it works now, people are forced to try and recharge their batteries with chocolate ice cream and Desperate Housewives. It leads to a total lack of culture. Larry Harvey’s first dinner is echoing in my ears. There is no new culture being built by the common people. They are only taking what advertisers are selling as culture.

The ones who have responded to my offer for dinner are ones who are looking behind the scenes. They are looking for a bit of reality behind all the false advertising. When they saw a real phone number in a furniture catalogue they called it. The fact that we have an imaginary area code for television, movies, and advertising is strange. 555 When did that number come to represent the make believe exchange? People noticed a bit of reality in a completely make believe world of commercial photography. I say it’s imaginary because I work in the field. The walls aren’t real, the floors aren’t real. Most people outside of the industry probably don’t know this, or even think about it.

I have helped lay down wood planks on cement to create an old barn floor look, pictures are hung from fishing line, lights have silk sheets shading it to diffuse the light and create a sense of calm. But it is a warehouse, not the bedroom we make it look to be.

The next afternoon Sean MacDonald arrived in his minivan, having driven five hours down from the Bay Area in order to silk screen the National Dinner Tour logo onto the hood of the car. It looked like a professional’s work. Thank’s buddy!

The rain is a powerful thing. It gathers in a place and becomes water. The water washes things clean. As it did the silkscreened logo on the hood. Almost clean. The brown smeared around, and the orange stayed put. Now it looks sun faded and road weary, just like the rest of the vehicle. Sean called and left a message on his way back north.

“The rain started”, he said, “you’d better put a tarp over the hood.” That message didn’t reach me in time.

I pulled over on some LA freeway to try and wipe the paint off, since it was flinging up onto the windshield. A cop pulled over and told me to get off the road at the next exit.

No respect for the arts.

Clark found himself a new hat! He’s supposed to be making my documentary. He’s really not as mean as he looks.

A Day Off

It’s debilitating, to be on the phone all day. Why haven’t I bought a hands free headset yet? I am in denial that my number is metaphorically written on every bathroom wall. Plus, headsets still aren’t cool yet. Probably this time next year things will be different. It won’t reek of drive through window to have an ear bud.

I sat in the front seat of the RV, parked at the curb in downtown Santa Monica. It was about 9:30 at night, and it was raining. Across the street I noticed a woman and her friend struggling to close a big white umbrella the wind had blown inside out. She tried to run into the wind to blow it back, holding it out like a lance in a calvery charge. No dice. She held it above her head and jumped up, hoping the gravity would add more leverage. Still nothing. When her friend tried to push it back, it seemed to wrap around her body and clutch her. I noticed the helping friend was buckled with laughter at this point. Even though it was dark and rainy and things were broken.

We stayed at my college friend’s house last nigh, Hak Lonh’s. We have two nights to stay with friends and not film, get caught up on internet stuff, emails, phone calls. One forgets how much energy it takes to make friends. There is a physical and mental effort exerted as one reads body language, tries to learn new personalities, look for reasons to trust or not trust someone. I have been meeting strangers and needing to gain their trust, and trust them, for almost two weeks. Like a muscle rarely used, it is hurts to do this.

With Hak, I crashed on his floor, opened the fridge, and took a shower without feeling any freeloader guilt. We talked about current projects, saw some film he is editing, and just hung out. It is nice to meet new people, but it is also important to stay connected to old friends. That can be just as much work. Ever wonder what the limit of possible friendships can be? In a physical number? How long before you wouldn’t have time to see them all?

Over breakfast in a Silverlake diner Hak and I talked about how much things costs, especially pure art projects.

“The Winchester Mystery House is a crazy place. The wife of the guy who invented Winchester rifles believed she needed to build a room for every soul killed by one of her husbands guns. It’s two miles of walking inside, dead ends, secret rooms, it’s bizarre. She spent so much money.”

“I wish I had invented something. Like the question mark.” Hak said.

“Did someone invent punctuation?” I asked him. What an amazing thought.

“I am the man who excites verbs. I call it exclamation.”

We paid our bill and left, headed back up into the hills. I don’t want to end this like a Bukowski story, but the Hollywood sign was hidden by a rain storm.

The next night was at a Naomie’s apartment off Fairfax in L.A. I met her on the original Dinner Tour. She invited a group of friends over for this evening and we went to a bar and sat at long tables and talked and had delicious Margaritas. Naomi’s friend Lilla is a professional free-lance writer who does food reviews. I would like her to come to our dinner tomorrow here in L.A. and write a critique of the meal. I think the more people involved in this project, the more it comes to mean. I don’t want to spoon feed people one answer to the question “What’s a National Dinner Tour?” I want to make a community around the project itself, and I have. From the friends of friends who helped me install a new water pump in the RV, and the guy who lent me a heavy duty floor jack so I could fix the leaky gas tank, lots of people have made it possible to simply get on the road. It would be fun to have Lilla give her professional opinion on this whole project.

People ask me all the time what the best meal is. I think any meal I don’t have to cook is delicious. The bigger point is what goes on during the meal. Eating dinner alone is one of the saddest things I have to do. I usually go out to eat instead. But standing in a kitchen with friends, washing carrots while someone stirs pasta sauce, that is one of the happiest things I have to do. Perhaps part of the appeal of the Dinner Tour is this same instinct in others. The need to share a meal, rather than eat alone

Laurie and Ben

It is an LA town, on an LA street, an apartment complex made of masonry and painted gray. There is an ornamental metal gate; ring number seven and the buzzer rattles like an electric chair, and the door pulls open.

Inside the apartment a group of stage and screen actors, musicians, and costume designers have gathered for dinner. The rain falls so hard we talk loud to ignore it, and with red wine and Miller Lite, dinner gets started and we talk louder still. It is fun stuff, songs are broken into like a new Honda in a dark alley. There is so much garlic on the garlic bread it burns the roof of your mouth, and there is just as much in the home made marinera, known as Puttanesca (whore sauce, in Italian, since it attracted men to the bordello). Beets have been sliced and stacked four high, with goat cheese between each layer. Stephanie called it a “beet parfait”, and it was delicious. Bel Gioioso cheese was grated onto a plate, it has the lightest feel, like picking up loose tinsel, but it has no sparkle and it melts on your tongue. Shrimp pesto and Japanese noodles, fresh basil, green salad and spinach rounded out the table. And another Miller Lite for me.

Mark, a dinner guest, was from England, and spoke with an appropriate accent, the kind that adds IQ points if its natural, and takes them away when you try to imitate it.
“I’ve just finished an article that discusses the differences between hero’s and celebrities. Celebrities are celebrated, hero’s are unnoticed. They are schoolteachers, nurses, people that are working to help others, while celebrities are just famous.”

He was nice enough to call me a hero, because I am bringing attention to unknown people and trying to bring good things to light through this project. The British are a classy bunch.

On the Road

We woke up behind a café, and a guy parked next to us took a real interest in the RV.
“86?” He asks.
“84” I say. (the year it was made.)
“Someone botched this caulk job. Rip that shit out and go to Marine World and buy some fuckin’ clear shit.”
“Really?”
“Yeah man, I used to work on these. You should rip out the electronics, put in a carb, make it international….”

He was a very intense talker. I started to go for the door to get back in.

“Hey, you guys got any weed?”
“No, sorry. “ I say.
“Well fuck you then. It ought to be against the law for you not to have weed in a rig like that.”

He jumped in his early 80’s Ford Crown Victoria and I heard him burn out twice as he left the parking lot.

EMAILS

I have an intern that responded to my Craigslist ad. She has been taking some calls, because I really want everyone that calls to feel like they connect with someone. I just don’t have enough time in a day to answer the hundreds of calls that come in. So Lisa has been answering emails and talking to folks. Thanks Lisa!

“Please come have lunch with me at our school. Wednesday is pizza and broccoli day.”

One young woman wrote to tell me her goal in life is to get so excited her eyebrows pop off her head. She likes ribbons. All kind’s of ribbons. And sunshine