Analyze

INGREDIENTS

2 cups flour

3⁄4 cup water

1 tablespoon shortening

1⁄2 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Mix all ingredients together.

3. Turn onto a floured board and knead for five minutes.

4. Let dough rest for 10 minutes.

5. Roll out half of the dough to 1/4 inch thick.

6. Use the rim of a cup or bowl cut out 12 circles, each about 3" across.

7. Use a fork to prick the center of the circle a few times.

8. Arrange on 2 baking sheets and bake for 15 minutes.

9. Turn oven off and leave crackers in oven until completely cool.

In the context of panel 37, “Sensory methods for planetary survival,” I will offer a “tiny workshop” focused on Saloon Pilot Crackers, a form of hardtack manufactured in Honolulu by Diamond Bakery. This tasting is part of a multi-year arts-led project called Tasting History: Biscuits, Culture, and National Identity, takes taste as a research method for uncovering how ancient military rations cut across socioeconomic divides to become staples of mainstream diets. Diamond Bakery’s recipe uses lard to soften hardtack, also known as ship’s biscuits, army biscuits, cabin bread, kanpan, sea bread, and a host of other names. Hidegoro Murai, Kikutaro Hiruya and Natsu Muramoto founded Diamond Bakery in 1921. Several pilot cracker manufacturers have ceased production in recent years, including Nabisco’s Crown Pilot and Hilo Macaroni Factory’s pilot cracker. Diamond Bakery’s crackers are special, a little bit rare even. Hardtack arrived in Hawai’i with whaling and missionary ships. Saloon Pilot crackers carry material relations of multispecies environmental injustices experienced in these contexts. Crackers are also delicious and beloved, widely consumed, and adapted to cuisines around the world. Pilot Crackers are a site of everyday pleasures—for example, eating the crackers with guava jelly and condensed milk, or, as the author of the above recipe recounts, a childhood memory: “My parents would break the plain cracker up into a cup of coffee and milk and have it for breakfast.” Pilot Crackers are land and sea, whale and harpoon, they are more and more difficult to find and eat. They form digestive networks, following what Parama Roy describes as “the logic of permeability rather than of inviolability that often marks the workings of an alimentary order” (20). Writing about poi, Hi’ilei Julia Hobart describes the difference between tasting and thinking with the mouth and tasting and thinking with the stomach, finding that when eaters “think with their mouths, not their stomachs, …they consume a food rather than enact a genealogical connection” (143). Hobart’s distinction between consuming a food through the mouth versus enacting a genealogical connection through the stomach could model the how environmental justice might taste. Hardtack, often positioned as a bland and unremarkable substrate for other foods, has the capacity to juxtapose cultural practices of food and eating with genealogies and histories of injustice that can be tasted, felt, and digested.

References

Hobart, Hiʻilei Julia. “A ‘Queer-Looking Compound’: Race, Abjection, and the Politics of Hawaiian Poi.” Global Food History 3:2 (2017).

Roy, Parama. Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial. Durham, NC: Duke, 2010.

Recipe by J-Ha7037: https://www.food.com/recipe/saloon-hard-track-pilot-crackers-351299

Source:

Kelley, Lindsay. 2023. "Taste Workshop: Daimond Bakery, Honolulu, Hawai'i." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Cudahy elementary school’s struggle for environmental justice foregrounds how sites of industrialization connect to organization of schools and other public institutions. I am curious about the work of organizations involved in the struggle–Cudahy Alliance for Justice, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ). I am also curious about the tactics and strategies used by these individuals and organizations to attain recognitional justice (being heard and listened to): how did they get DTSC and the school district to get them to listen? Further, the latter half of the story focuses on the proposed construction of a charter school nearby the elementary school: How do environmental governance and education restructuring shape each other?

The podcast episode tells the story of the Park View Elementary School in Cudahy, LA County. Located on a former toxic dump, parents and educators have been involved in decades’ long fight to remediate and clean up the school land. That fight has not been easy. They have encountered an apathetic school district and a slowly-moving Dept. of Toxic Substances Control.  The coalition of parents, educators, and activists gained traction by collaborating with Spanish language media productions. The school closed down for a cleanup and reopened in 2001, but students and educators still reported feeling sick. They later found out that the cleanup had been planned to be short-term and a longer remediation plan was underway. Many parents shifted schools. The story continued with the proposal to build a charter school just a few miles away from the elementary school and from a former Exide battery recycling plant. The podcast offers a narrative-style discussion of cumulative impacts, mapping tools that make it possible to visualize different datasets to display disproportionate burdens, and structural and recognitional injustices that the parents and educators faced.

The film looks at the struggles of the doctors in MSF while on missions in third-world countries. These issues stem from lack of supplies, quality of the facilities, and high patient influx. The doctors in the film are burning out quick, with way too many responsibilities to tkae care of. The setting is in Liberia and the Congo during a period of war. The film also examines the tensions developed between the doctors due to differences in style, knowledge, and culture. The clash of personalities and reasons for being in MSF also contribute to the tension. 

The film largely plays on emotional appeals and drama. By documenting the interviews of the doctors, which often are about the other doctors, the viewers see just how hard it is to detach ones self from their work. There is a scene in which the doctors talk about how, despite all the issues they face in the medical setting, everything at the end of the day is about personal relationships. It even briefly touches on sex between the medical staff and how that contributes to the care given. Since the film is based on personal interviews, little to no scientific information is given about the disease and injuries seen; its all based on personal opinion. 

The stakeholders in the film would be the doctors, the local health ministry, and the patients themselves. The doctors were the most focused on, and they were put into a lot of situations in which they were the sole decision makers. However, many times the decisions weren't life or death, but death or comfort. For instance, Davinder was in a situation where a child was inexplicably swelling all over his body. The doctors weren't well equipped for diagnosing his illness, and thus the child was doomed to worsen and die. A nurse informed him that the mother had taken the child and left, to which Davinder remarked that he couldn't blame them. He believed the comfort of the child in somewhere without his care was worth just as much as, if not more than, his care in the hospital. This was quite different than Kiara's opinion that they needed to stay in the hospital. She blamed it on a lack of confidence in medical ability, while he saw it as being human.

Following the time on the mission, the doctors all had to decide what was next. Dr. Brasher left MSF to practice medicine in Paris, while Dr. Gill went to Australia to become a pediatrician, with no plans of returning to MSF. Dr. Lapora was promoted to Emergency Coordinator, and established three more missions in other parts of the world. Dr. Krueger still works with MSF and has been on a number of other missions. All of the doctors continued medicine, but their experiences in Liberia dictated their plans on whether to continue this service.  

Emergency responders as a unique group aren't discussed or portrated in the film. However, the doctors had to take on the role of emergency responders often, while not neccesarily being emergency doctors. The question in the film became whether or not the doctors were prepared for these roles, and if they had the energy to dedicate to them. Some doctors burn out, and others thrive, but regardless they are challenged to make sacrifices that emergency responders often must decide on. 

The film would have the most impact on the general population, like something that would be played on a news channel before prime time. The level of emotional appeal and interpersonal drama is enough to keep anyone intersted for the length of the film. The film does however paint the experience in a negative light, which could discourage professionals from pursuin mission worlk. Thats why the general population would be most receptive to the struggles. Its easy for them to say "I would do something like that if...." without having the ability to do anything. 

The film doesn't look much at the people's experience with MSF. There are no interviews of the patient's themsleves. The film touches on the local health officials' opinons, but not much on the actual patients'. It doesn't highlight their sturggles as much as I believe it should. 

The film provided general facts about MSF and the conditions in Lieria and the Congo, but no detailed medical statisitics. There wasn't any comparison of the issues in this mission versus those on other missions. The film could have included more on the factors that contribute to the diseases themselves, rather than the barriers to treating them. The film also needed more on the exact amounts of supplies that were given relative to what one would have in a clinic elsewhere.