May 2019 Songaia Intern
Hello Songaia members! My name is Flower Star and I am one of the new Songaia interns, starting about the middle of May. I’ve already met some of you at a community meeting and work party in December and March; I look forward to meeting the rest of you. Let me tell you a little about myself. I currently live in Port Angeles, WA on the Olympic Peninsula. I am a recent graduate of Bastyr University in Kenmore, WA and I have a a Bachelor of Art’s in Language Arts and a Master’s of Science in Nutrition with an emphasis in the Didactic Program of Dietetics. I have never lived in a co-housing community, but I have lived successfully with numerous roommates. I feel each of these housing situations were successful due to a set of courtesies that everyone followed. I also enjoyed the friendships I developed and the social time, sharing food and experiences. I will be staying onsite during my internship and attending the social gatherings, so I can get a sense of the community life.
Hello Songaia members! My name is Flower Star and I am one of the new Songaia interns, starting about the middle of May. I’ve already met some of you at a community meeting and work party in December and March; I look forward to meeting the rest of you. Let me tell you a little about myself. I currently live in Port Angeles, WA on the Olympic Peninsula. I am a recent graduate of Bastyr University in Kenmore, WA and I have a a Bachelor of Art’s in Language Arts and a Master’s of Science in Nutrition with an emphasis in the Didactic Program of Dietetics. I have never lived in a co-housing community, but I have lived successfully with numerous roommates. I feel each of these housing situations were successful due to a set of courtesies that everyone followed. I also enjoyed the friendships I developed and the social time, sharing food and experiences. I will be staying onsite during my internship and attending the social gatherings, so I can get a sense of the community life.
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I applied to this internship as the elective of my dietetic internship with Garden to Table Nutrition. There are a lot of different places I could have done this elective, but I have always envisioned myself in a community that works together to be more sustainable. As a Bastyr graduate, I feel that whole foods are the key not only to proper nutrition and health but a quality life. Now I’m taking the next step by getting some experience living in the kind of community I would like to be part of some day. It is my plan to participate in a community garden after this experience and to start my own garden once I am working as an RD if I am not able to find a sustainable community to live in.
Some of the skills I hope to acquire include fertilizing, planting, harvesting, canning, and permaculture of course. I am also very interested in the food forest concept which Songaia is incorporating as well as sustainable agriculture. Lastly, I’m hoping the Songaia garden will teach me many things about the process that food takes from garden to table. I’m hoping my onsite living experience will give me a sense of how to organize a co-housing community. As an intern at Songaia for two months, my passion to learn this process will help to give me a solid foundation in this process and an idea of how I would apply it to my future goal of connecting my clients to food in a natural setting.
Some others things I like to do beside learning about food and nutrition include cooking, hiking, taking pictures, and reading. Some recipes I have been experimenting with lately include pumpkin and blackberry pie. The pumpkin pie is dairy free and made from fresh blended pumpkin I cooked and froze myself. I also like to experiment with food and herbs as medicine. For instance, boiling ginger, chamomile, and oregano together can take away cramps.
My husband and I love to go camping and hiking all over Washington and sometimes other states if we have the time. The pictures of the cacti are from a hike I did in Texas last year while I was working as a registered dietetic technician. The scenery is obviously really different in El Paso, TX, but it grows on you. I especially liked hiking in the spring when all the cacti were blooming. Some of my favorite books right now are “The Beauty Detox Foods by Kimberly Snyder which discusses how foods can age you or make you younger. The author does an excellent job of supporting her assertions with peer-reviewed research. I also really like the “ The Slow Down Diet: Eating for Pleasure, Energy, and Weight Loss” by Marc David which connects mindfulness to eating and provides numerous strategies you can use to eat more intuitively.
My latest activity was to go to Legislative Day in Olympia, WA to learn about the legislative process. I learned that WA State has one of the 10 most regressive tax systems in the United States, causing people in the lower income brackets to pay a lot more in taxes than those in the upper brackets. WA State also has a 4 billion dollar deficit. Because of this economic situation, getting policy passed and funded is difficult, so it is extremely important to stay actively involved in advocating for what you want to see changed and to take action; in my case, that would involve food and nutrition.
Again, I’m looking forward to joining the Songaia, sharing my knowledge of nutrition and cooking and learning more about gardening and community to become a more well-rounded person.
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