Joan Gussow, Pioneer in 'Eat Locally, Think Globally'

A tribute to the late educator and nutritionist, plus music from Sheryl Crow, Brandi Carlile, George Harrison and Marianne Faithfull, and the usual cartoons.

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre.” Now watch trailer for acclaimed 2025 film “The Atomic Bowl.” Before all that, he was a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy. At Blue Sky and Twitter: as @gregmitch. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for FREE. Sustain this newsletter by ordering one of his books.

You’ll find the usual swell music and cartoons down below, but a special piece to start off….

Over the weekend, Joan Gussow passed away at her home in Piermont, N.Y, at the age of 96. This was news enough to warrant a lengthy New York Times obituary that ran on its home page, with the headline including these words: “Pioneer in Eating Locally.” They hailed her as “a nutritionist and educator who was often referred to as the matriarch of the ‘eat locally, think globally’ food movement,” and a major influence on everyone from Michael Pollan (one of our old friends) to Barbara Kingsolver, along with the rise of farmers markets and “locally sourced” restaurants.

Joan lived on the Hudson, just two miles from our home, where she tended a famous garden for several decades. My wife, Barbara Bedway, an essayist, journalist and fiction writer, got to know her very well and remained a friend. I visited the garden myself and shared a couple of very enjoyable dinners with her nearby (she had a strong sense of humor and sharp views on politics). Barbara wrote for this Substack the following, below my photo of her with Joan (left) in her garden in 2012.

Our Lady of the Hudson

by Barbara Bedway

One of my cherished sanctuaries during the Covid epidemic was the upper terrace of my friend Joan Gussow’s house, which overlooked the Hudson River and her long, narrow garden that ended at a boardwalk by the river’s edge. She offered a glass of red or white wine, a bowl of mixed nuts, and the wisdom and perspective of her nine decades on our imperiled Earth, earth that she long tried to nurture and protect as a nutritionist, indomitable gardener and writer on food and sustainability.

The newly constructed Governor Mario Cuomo Bridge—still known to us locals by the name of the bridge it replaced, the Tappen Zee—was also visible from her house. Its ostentatious night lighting offended her. “It’s never visually quiet at night, like the previous bridge was,” she said. “You can never forget there’s a bridge there.”

Joan died at her home this past Friday, at the age of 96. She had been offering her unique angle on the universe for more than half a century. There was a great deal in the modern world that grieved her: She was one of the first to sound the alarm about the true cost--in energy use, pollution, diabetes and obesity—of how we grow and consume food in this country, as well as the worldwide disruption to lives and food chains by the rising levels of carbon dioxide that were changing the global climate. She had herself experienced the Hudson River’s flooding her vulnerable tongue of land numerous times. At the dinner where I first met her in 2008, she joked that she eventually becomes an unwelcome party guest, compelled to make the looming threat of a warming planet part of her dinner conversation.

When I asked her once why she was not terminally depressed from the cascade of grim news on the fate of the planet, she answered: “I feel existential pain and personal happiness.”

Her personal happiness was surely rooted in her garden. I could see how the words "tender" and "tend" are related when she talked about her plants and where they belonged in her 36-by-100-foot plot. Even in the years when the weeds were “pervasive and monstrous” she saw their growth as a reflection of a fabulous growing season; how thrilled she was to note her “74 pounds of potatoes, hundreds of onions, carrots galore, more broccoli than I could ever eat.” I particularly relished gifts of her perennial arugula, the bounty from her fig tree, and those heroic survivors of the Hudson floodings, her Purple Peruvian potatoes.

In her last book, Growing, Older, she has a chapter entitled “My Obituary.” In it she mentions that posted on her bulletin board is the comment she read somewhere that “The day I die I want to have a black thumb from where I hit it with a hammer and scratches on my hands from pruning the roses.” She came close. The last time I saw her, in hospice care at her own home, she was sitting at her kitchen table, removing leaves from the stems of dried rosemary. When I asked her what she wanted now, thinking to bring her some material thing, she answered: “I want people to go beyond just maintaining life, to maintaining life that is rich and full.”

When Growing, Older was first published, I told her that the last chapter, “But Did You Get What You Wanted?” always put me in mind of the Raymond Carver poem “Late Fragment” that begins with that very line:

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

If the Earth itself could call anyone “beloved,” it would surely be Joan Gussow.

_____

[There are numerous videos of Joan talking about her life and ideas on You Tube, one good one here. Civil Eats now has posted an amazing collection of tributes. And here she is leading a panel with Michael Pollan and chef Dan Barbar from 2008.]

Now, three music clips for today. In yesterday’s post on my big career move in 1971—reviving the legendary Crawdaddy magazine—I included a few songs popular that month, including one of my favorite George Harrison songs “Beware of Darkness.” I’ve since found terrific cover versions by Sheryl Crow with Brandi Carlile, and Marianne Faithfull, and George’s original acoustic demo. So here you go:

From Tunes to Toons