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Dane Koch presented an award to Everyday Hero John Bingle Thompson .(Photo: Lani Garfield, Special to The Desert Sun)

Desert AIDS Project (DAP) held its 6th annual Everyday Heroes event on Dec. 1 at the Palm Springs Cultural Center to shine a spotlight on everyday individuals who inspire others.

CEO David Brinkman said he believes Everyday Heroes connects deeply to the humanitarian work of DAP because each of the honorees, in their own way, helps DAP do the work it does to remove roadblocks to human potential. The work of each of the honorees is heroic and deserves the type of recognition traditionally reserved for major philanthropists in the Coachella Valley.

Steve Kaufer, DAP board chair, opened the program to the standing-room-only auditorium, announcing that Everyday Heroes was born to honor the work of local individuals who, through their kindness and compassion, inspire us all. Kaufer reminded the audience that DAP serves more than 7,000 clients and provides 426 people with housing. And during the 2018-2019 fiscal year, DAPtested more than 2,784 people for HIVand more than 1,349 for Hepatitis C. On-site medical teams provided 5,354 dental visits and 7,160 behavioral health sessions.

Dane Koch, DAPs director of retail, introduced John Bingle Thompson, recipient of the Everyday Heroes award for his commitment to the Revivals retail store as a volunteer since 2015. I choose to volunteer at DAP because I, like most of us here tonight, have lost friends and family to HIV/AIDS, Thompson said as he accepted the award.

Everyday Hero Fiona Foyston seemed genuinely moved by being honored.(Photo: Lani Garfield, Special to The Desert Sun)

Ann Sheffer, co-chair and DAP board member, recognized Fiona Foyston for volunteering at DAP and other local organizations. She quoted Mahatma Gandi who said, The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.Foyston accepted the award by recognizing her grandfather, who instilled in her at an early age to be non-judgmental and to accept everyone as they are. If you want to give your little ones a unique gift, Foyston concluded, introduce them to the worthwhile adventures they can experience by helping others.

Everyday Hero Brett Klein talked about aging with HIV.(Photo: Lani Garfield, Special to The Desert Sun)

Co-chair Tom Truhe introduced Brett Klein, who was recognized for his engagement with and leadership roles in the local LGBT communities and HIV+Aging Research Project. Having lived with HIV for 27 years, he noted how he has become keenly aware of the immense need to understand and explore how aging with HIV can affect your body, mind, soul and healthy longevity.

Molly Bondhus and Wil Stiles were presented the first-ever Barbara Keller Community Action Award.(Photo: Lani Garfield, Special to The Desert Sun)

Co-chair and DAP board member Terri Ketover presented the first-ever Barbara Keller Community Action Award to local retail fashion iconsMolly Bondhus and Wil Stiles.

Molly and Wil are two of the most authentic people I have ever met, Ketover said, and their commitment to justice and humanity is unmatched. Bondhus and Stiles celebrated their boutiques 10th anniversary by donating $500,000 worth of new fashion to Revivals Stores to raise funds for DAP.

Truhe concluded the program by thanking his co-chairs Ketover and Sheffer, and DAPs major and event sponsors Steve Tobin and The Grace Helen Spearman Foundation, GileadSciences, Ann Sheffer and Bill Scheffler, Mike Williams and Canyon Pacific Insurance, Contempo Lending, Lulu California Bistro, News Channel 3 and KESQ, Palm Springs Cultural Center, Gay Desert Guide, The Standard Magazine, Leslie Barclays from Diageo Spirits and Smirnoff, Momentous Events, Promo Homo.TV, CV Independent, Hohn Paschal Photography and The Desert Sun.

At the afterparty, where refreshments weredonated by Jerry Keller and Lulu California Bistro, Willie Rhine, recipient of an Everyday Heroes award in 2018,shared that he appreciates DAP for honoring deserving community members who give back to their community quietly, volunteering their time without fanfare.

Susan Stein, Dr. Oscar Chamudes and Tom Truhe met up under the tent.(Photo: Lani Garfield, Special to The Desert Sun)

Among the community leaders enjoying the evening: former Senator Barbara Boxer, Donna MacMillan, Dr. Les Zendel, David Zippel and Michael Johnston, David Perez, Tom Oliver and Matthew Stocker, Jeffery Bernstein and Dr. Oscar Chamudes, Jeffrey Norman, Tad Green and Ed McBride, Lynn Hammond, Julie Makinen, Ellen Wolf, Gayle Hodges and Art Wedmore, Paul Clowers and Frank Goldstin, Andy Linsky, Kevin Bass, Stuart Leviton and Herb Schultz, Susan Stein, Jerry Keller, Brian Wanzek, Renee Glickman, Dennis Flaig-Moore, Albert Gonzalez and Rhine.

Khalil Gibran in "The Prophet" said it best: You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Al Jones currently serves as chairman of the Palm Springs International Airport Commission, on the Desert AIDS Project Partners for Life Leadership Committee and on the CSU Palm Desert Campus Advancement Board. He is also an Allegro member of the Palm Springs Opera Guild and a former board member of Sanctuary Palm Springs and The LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert.

6th annual Everyday Heroes Awards 2019

Sunday, Dec. 1

Palm Springs Cultural Center

Benefiting Desert AIDS Project, 1695 N. Sunrise Way, Palm Springs

How to help: To donate or volunteer, call (760) 323-2118 or email info@desertaidsproject.org

Read or Share this story: https://www.desertsun.com/story/life/2019/12/13/everyday-heroes-honored-palm-springs-desert-aids-project/4380509002/

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Everyday Heroes who inspire honored by Desert AIDS Project - The Desert Sun

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The Safdies brothers explain their new movies title: Am I non-judgemental? Yes, that means my gems are uncut. Am I on edge? Yes, my gems are uncut. Do I have depth underneath the surface? Yes, my gems are uncut. Photo: Julia Cervantes/A24

Theres a certain rhythm to Uncut Gems and the way it reaches for things for basketball, for jewels, for wins and losses, for takeout from Smith & Wollensky. It revels in its own excess: every single character is talking at once, trying to buy or sell or cut a deal. Its the Diamond District in 2012 when our hero, Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), is trying to play the part of 47th Streets slickest salesman. A pack of debt collectors are on his trail, but he compulsively romantically, maniacally keeps placing bets. When a middleman walks NBA power forward Kevin Garnett into Howards jewelry store, every moment after feels like a miracle and a curse all at once. Will Kevin come back with the black opal Howard loaned him as a token of good luck? If Howard can auction it off, is it worth as much as he says? Whats the Weeknd doing here?

Gems directors, the Safdie brothers Benny, 33, and Josh, 35 talk like the movies they make: theyll jump up to act out a story or pull out a cell phone to show a photo, speaking fast and a lot as they try to keep up with their next thought. A question about a set can easily prompt an erratic anecdote about the time they walked in on some guy curing meat in a random building in midtown Manhattan. I believe them when they tell me that they rewrote their movie several times, first basing Howards saga around Amare Stoudemire, then Kobe Bryant, and then Joel Embiid, before finally landing on Garnett. Each time, the story of an impossibly lucky gem was reimagined to fit the particulars of each NBA stars career. All of this is a box we put ourselves into, Benny says. We say, Oh we had to do this, we had to do that. We didnt actually have to shoot with a real basketball player and use real games, we chose to. Throughout the course of a conversation with Vulture, the brothers discuss their alternate Uncut Gems plots, the real-life Diamond District figures they befriended, and, of course, what the name of their movie even means.

Josh Safdie: I was trying to explain the whole gems uncut, cut my gems thing to someone. They were like, I dont get it. I was like, Well, this is my take on it. You want to know my take on it?

Hunter Harris: Yes.JS: I want to know your take on it first.

No, no, no. Im interviewing you, I want to hear what you guys have to say.JS: Heres my take on it Am I non-judgmental? Yes, that means my gems are uncut. Am I on edge? Yes, my gems are uncut. Do I have depth underneath the surface? Yes, my gems are uncut. If my gems are cut, Im like naked, ready to be seen. Im potentially dangerous. Uncut is very dangerous, but cut is extra dangerous, because it can have a sharp point. My value is hidden if my gems are uncut, so I have a deeper, bigger value. I might be a little flawed, but Im worth it. Thats gems uncut.

Ah, I see.JS: Ultimately I think its just a very fun play on words, but also, I think its deep. And yes, my gems are uncut.

Benny Safdie: Its also, like, Who are you to cut my gems?

Sort of, Have you no decency? Benny, the last time we spoke, you said that you thought of Howard as literally an uncut gem.BS: The idea is that hes rough on the outside, but if you scratched below the surface, you see the beauty, and you see these things that you didnt quite know were there at first glance. You need to understand him to really love and know who he is.

JS: To me, Howard being an uncut gem is like a corollary to the movie being a radical humanist film, which is kind of in a weird way, all of our movies. Our entire life weve grown up with very flawed people around us, and weve had to see past those flaws, or excuse them, to get at something that makes them relatable, or human, or worthy of value. In the jewelry trade, uncut gems are major gambles. You have to be a genius with your eye to find one [that is actually valuable].

BS: Its not easy to do. If you look at a flawed person and try to see who and what it is that makes them interesting, you learn more about people in general. If you see a stand-up person, sometimes that can make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. Its like, Oh, Im not that good. So if you see somebody who has flaws or issues, it reflects back on humanity in a bigger way.

Theres something else that just popped in my head: if you take a diamond, and its like a rough

JS: I hate diamonds.

Josh, why do you hate diamonds?JS: I mean, look, when you see an IF diamond an internally flawless diamond the purity of it is remarkable: Wow, that actually exists. Its beautiful to see a solid take the form of a liquid with a diamond. That is beautiful. But its the general PR huckster-ism of the diamond industry. Diamonds arent rare. Ultimately, theyre kind of boring Ill take an Indian Star sapphire any day over a diamond. Ill even take like, a cats eye. But like opals in general I mean, a pigeons blood ruby, whoa.

Why opals, specifically, for this movie?JS: Very early on, when we were deciding on which stone should be in the film, it happened to have been right when Ethiopia started to publicize their black opals. It was a big moment in the geological world. The Australians, who are known for their black opals, were actually really pissed about it. Theyre like, Uh-oh, we cant corner the market anymore, so they started an anti-Ethiopia PR campaign. And, sadly, the Ethiopian opals didnt have longevity to them. They started to craze and crack, they were less valuable, which was unfortunate.

JS: White opals are very unlucky, but the black opals are very lucky. And theyre brilliant. You can see the color in them. And they dont have the superstition against them that white opals have.

BS: Some people are afraid of them.

JS: Not black opals, no.

BS: Really?

JS: Well theres a stigma against opals in general, but people who know gems and energies and things, the black opal is an exceptional gem.

BS: But there is something to this idea that people can be afraid of a gem, afraid of an opal.

JS: White opals are predominantly very unlucky, yes. Particularly the Italians, they fucking hate them. They wont go near them. But, the black opal was considered the antithesis of the white opal. Theres a specific color pattern to a black opal its called the harlequin pattern, which is like the most valuable color pattern. Anyway, thats why I prefer a black opal to a diamond.

I want to talk about basketball. Were there other NBA players you reached out to, before Kevin?JS: It started with Amare Stoudemire, who was a Knicks player in 2010. Thats when we started the project. Hes famously a Black Jewish person, so the themes of the movie presented themselves in that way: Ethiopian Jewish tribe. Beta Israelites. Black opals, which were found by a Jewish tribe in the Beta Israelites in Welo mines. Amare is a very spiritual person. He calls himself the spiritual gangster.

But about 20152016, we were having trouble getting financing, finding the right person to star as Howard, and our agency suggested casting up and going with Kobe Bryant. But Kobe they didnt understand the themes of the movie. Hes a West Coast person, we needed East Coast games. Because we had to write around the reality of the games.

Sure.JS: But then I was like, You know what? Theres this one game at the Garden that Kobe dropped 60 points. Lets make that the gem game. And the gem will become a youth elixir, and [the movie will] be about reminding everybody whos the man. In that version, Howards like trying to reclaim his initial win. And, so then we spent two weeks rewriting the whole script, changing the vibe and the themes of the film.

Around Kobe?JS: Around Kobe. And then our agents are like, No, no, no. He doesnt want to act anymore. He wants to direct. And Id just spent two weeks fucking writing this thing! Hes like, Yeah, were not going to send it to him. I was like, What the fuck?!

So then we ended up with Joel Embiid. Because we were like, You know what, were going to update the movie. Its going to be a contemporary film. You want to use a contemporary player. And Joel Embiid presented himself. Before he was even playing in the NBA, he was a legendary Twitter user. He trolled Rihanna. Hes amazing. Hilarious, you know what I mean? And, so I was like, He could be interesting. He could play into the comedy of the film, because his humor is dry and droll. We ended up meeting him through his manager, and his manager ends up in the film.

Who is the manager in the movie?JS: She plays Kevins manager, Jenny Sachs. This is the way the cosmos works: shes studied psychiatry, and worked at a needle exchange. She weirdly saw Heaven Knows What [the Safdies 2016 film]. No one in the sports world saw Heaven Knows What, but she did. She was like vouching for us to Joel, and then we became friends with Joel. And I started going to the Sixers games, and working with Joel, and understanding. Then the themes of the movie became even more overt, with an African player. I was just like, Oh, this is about reclamation, this is about being empowered by reclamation. Joel was into that, things were moving. Now this is the Joel Embiid movie.

When I was writing the scenes, I would send them to Joel. Joel would read them, but mostly Jenny would be like, I dont know if he can do that. I dont know if this is too much. This scene might be too much to ask of him. I got a little nervous about that. But in the end, I knew he was such a cocky guy that it would have been fine. And then the schedule pushed into the NBA season, and we couldnt use an active player. So then we had a list of other players who were recently retired. We went back to Amare.

BS: The list wasnt like this [gestures widely] long.

JS: Amare wouldnt shave his head to match the games that we had to cut in between.

BS: But the thing is [laughs] all of this is a box we put ourselves into. We say, Oh we had to do this, we had to do that. We didnt actually have to shoot with a real basketball player and use real games, we chose to because

JS: We did have to.

Because how else do you make this movie?BS: Thats the point! But everybodys, Oh, just cast an actor.

JS: Someone did try to push that on us.

BS: Really, that is an idea that was put out there. Im like, Maybe you dont understand. Having a real player, and having a player act, and then using those real games on the television creates a good alchemy.

JS: Once we saw the new list [of available retired players], Kevin Garnetts name was on it. As a Knicks fan, I was so, like, We cant put Kevin Garnett in the movie. I hate him. But that was when my film intelligence was kind of eclipsed by my insane, schizophrenic, Knicks fandom, where I actually couldnt see past what I normally would have realized, which was that me hating Garnett is actually a testament to his incredible acting ability, and how he plays a great heel in the NBA. He can get people to despise him, based on his performance on a nightly basis of 20,000 people.

BS: And when we were talking to him, just the way that he told stories Id never seen anything like it before. He would set you up in the room, show you where people were sitting, who was behind him, the noises that were happening, the way the door closed.

JS: Put it this way, he sweats when he tells a story You have to remember, hes a superstar. He went from high school to the pros.

BS: He kind of underplays [his performance in Uncut Gems], like, Oh, I was just playing myself. I was just playing myself. Thats a very difficult thing to do, because you have to be comfortable.

JS: Hes playing the self that he created for the NBA.

Adam Sandler as Howard, wet and beaten in New York City, in a scene from Uncut Gems. Photo: Julia Cervantes/A24

So tell me more about the Diamond District, and re-creating this world that feels at once very alive but also hermetically sealed. How did you make that happen, particularly when Howards actual shop was built on a soundstage, right?BS: For us, it was actually hard because we like to shoot on location all the time. To do that on a stage was out of necessity. We couldnt physically shoot in a real jewelers place. We wouldnt have had a lease long enough, and getting up and down in these buildings is insane.

JS: The lease wasnt the problem.

BS: No, it was mainly just getting in and out of [a jewelers shop]. Theres a certain amount of elevators, and theres so many people going up and down all the time. We wouldnt have been able to get all the stuff in there to build it out. We had this whole idea that people would be coming into work on the district, they would kind of breathe this energy. So, once we moved into a stage, its like: How do we re-create that feeling, that vibe? By bringing a bunch of people there who worked in the district that are in the movie. Sometimes they werent even in the scene, but we had them there just to kind of breathe the energy.

JS: To me, the first major compromise of the film was agreeing to shoot the business on a soundstage. And by the business, I mean his showroom, his back room, the hallway, the elevator bays.

BS: But, for [the shoots that did take place on the streets of the Diamond District], we really wanted to capture the district as it was, kind of unfettered from us. Even though we were having a footprint there, we didnt want to disturb it. We kept it open, which you have to. Legally youre not allowed to close the street, because its business. We embraced that fully. Theres people just walking in and out of the frames, all the time.

JS: In 2012, after the first nostalgic draft was finished, I went and started to involve myself deep in the research in the Diamond District. Its a very consumers materialist world me not being able to buy anything there was actually like a major inhibitor of getting deep in with anyone.

So howd you do it?JS: I had to bring press clippings in, and try to prove that I was a real filmmaker. And, over time, those clippings became a little bit more impressive. Two years into my research, we made a documentary about a basketball player

This is Lenny Cooke?JS: Yeah, that reached the Diamond District crowd. They do a lot of business with athletes, and a lot of athletes were talking about the movie. They also stay on WorldStarHipHop, and the trailer blew up on WorldStar. I actually brought Lenny to the diamond district once, because he used to go. He went to Jacob the Jeweler. There was a jewelry shop called Rafael and Co., who were very helpful to us in the beginning, letting us see how the business operates. But there was another guy named Joe Rodeo. I had a friend, and the friend has since passed, but he was a real character. He was from New York. His name was Tuna. He loved going there, and making a big show of buying shit from these guys, like a watch, or what have you. Finally I was in, because I was now with someone who was buying stuff. When I got to go to the back rooms, I took photos. I wasnt sure that I was ever going to get back to this specific upstairs spot, because its pretty private. I took so many pictures the first time I went in there. I probably took like a hundred pictures of the weirdest stuff

BS: How about Joe?

JS: This guy. His name isnt even Joe! We met him and someone called him that, and they just went with it for a while. They were just like, Yeah, Joe. It was so strange. Joe owned a building 20 West 47th. His son Alon married into a very big family on 47th street, the Nektalov family. Theres a great New York Magazine piece about Nektalov. Nektalov was murdered on Sixth Avenue. Its a crazy story.

Oh my God.JS: So the Nektalov family is Leon Diamonds, and they were huge on the block. They were very hard to get in with. Richie Nektalov ended up helping [us]. Thats whose Rolls Royce it is in the movie that Judd Hirsch gets into.

BS: Thats Richie Nektalovs house, too, and hes also in the Passover scene.

JS: So, the tentacles were wide, you know? Eventually I got in with Joe and his son Alon. And Joe was very skeptical of us. Like, Who are these guys? Can we make money off of them? And I was just trying to earn my place. They showed us this huge penthouse. When I went up there for the first time, there was a guy curing meat, living on an air mattress. I have pictures of it. This guy had a bunch of meat hanging up from the ceiling.

BS: This is on Sixth Avenue and 47th Street, in the middle of Manhattan! Its unbelievable.

JS: Hes curing meat! Id told them I knew all these interior designers and architects. So hes like, If you can help me turn this into a lounge he had this big vision for it, with a sauna, and all this stuff Ill help you in exchange. So I ended up hiring an architect. I brought in this legendary interior designer, who weirdly has also since passed, Jim Walrod.

And then what happened?JS: I said, Ill do this for you Joe, in exchange for a six-month lease on a space in your building. It was the perfect size, but as Benny was saying, it became very impractical to actually shoot in it.

BS: Once you accept that okay, were not going to do it on location, well do it on the stage, you get to design. The design of [Howards shop] is just crazy to get into the details. We could design parts of the space to be a certain height, based on Kevin Garnetts height. So when he goes in, he looks much bigger.

JS: We made the ceilings about half a foot shorter, to make him look taller.

BS: Basically we have this whole space outfitted to look so real, and yet its totally fabricated. Every light was on its own color temperature, its own brightness. It was the most complicated lighting setup you could possibly have.

JS: This has nothing to do with 47th Street.

BS: It does. Its about capturing the vibe. You literally go so far to fake it, to make it look real.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Benny and Josh Safdie on the Alternate History of Uncut Gems - Vulture

Added on December 12, 2019Mark McDermottManhattan Beach , newsletter

Dan Buettner in the Okinawa blue zone. Photo by Dan McLain/National Geographic

National Geographic explorer Dan Buettner investigates the food and culture of those who live the longest, and comes back with recipes

by Mark McDermott

Most mornings, Cowboy Jose Bonifacio rides his horse Corazn five miles to go see two old friends. Bonifacio is known far and wide as one of the great vaqueros, or cowboys, of the Guanacaste province on the Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica. He began riding horses in 1921, at the age of 4. Hes 102 years old. His two friends are both over 100.

Two years ago, National Geographic explorer Dan Buettner went looking for the great cowboy, who hes known for years. Buettner has led several expeditions to the Nicoya Peninsula because it is home to some of the longest living humans on Earth, and longevity has been his area of inquiry for the last decade and a half. Hes written four books and dozens of National Geographic articles about the so-called blue zones, the five areas scattered across the planet where people live the longest. He sought out Bonifacio who is not hard to find, having lived in the same house all his 102 years for his newest book, The Blue Zones Kitchen.

Buettners intentions were simple. He wanted to share a meal with Bonifacio and his family, and take notes. Buettner has spent more time with 100-year-olds, known as centenarians, than anyone on the planet who is not 100. His research has been about the ways of life that lead to the kind of health in which people not only live a century but do so, like Bonifacio, with gusto. Hes examined everything from habits of human connection to physical activity and even the composition of the soil and water in the lands where people live longest, but all these roads lead back to the most fundamental of human activities: sharing a meal. And this is why he found himself back at Bonifacios humble dwelling in Guanacaste.

We arrive early, waiting for him in the cool shade under the 100-year-old mango trees in his courtyard, Buettner writes. He trots up on a horse wearing blue jeans, a checkered shirt, and a jaunty-angled cowboy hat. He dismounts with a bounce and welcomes us warmly with a handshake and a half toothed smile. Hes lived in the same house his whole life, now with four generations of descendants. At 100, he still recites romantic poems and professes his love of women.

Buettner has spent time with over 300 centenarians, but none cooler than the cowboy, who on this occasion asked his daughter and granddaughter to prepare a special lunch for his visitors, Buettner and famed National Geographic photographer David McLain. The lunch was served in an outdoor kitchen, centered around an oven used by the Chorotega, a tribe of corn farmers who historically were the most powerful of the Native Americans in the region.

Dinner is served in Ikaria. Photo by Dan McLain/National Geographic

They cook over a fogn, which is a Chorortega oven that dates back before the age of Christ, Buettner said in an interview. Its sort of a U-shaped adobe appliance, so to speak, with a wooden fire. So there you are, smelling roasted corn and woodsmoke and the aromaThe beans they are making tend to be more aromatic, with peppers and onions and garlic and cilantro. And its a wooden structure with slats in it, so sunlight is angling through the slats and hitting the floor in long parallel lines, but its sort of beautifully, smokily illuminated on the inside. And you are smelling the same smells that the ancient Maya were smelling in 1,000 B.C.

Lunch was chunky vegetable soup, a veggie hash with corn and onions, hearts of palms with herbs and garlic, creamy lima beans and herbs, and fried green plantains. It was accompanied by mugs of what Buettner described as shockingly refreshing horchata and citrus fresco.

The Blue Zones Kitchen, which includes recipes for each component of the lunch, was released last week and achieved a somewhat unusual feat for what is ostensibly a cookbook: it was the bestselling book in the United States across all categories. The books success shocked even Buettner.

Its surreal, he said. After years and years of these high-minded literary pursuits, I realized what people want are just pretty pictures and a great bean recipe.

The Blue Zones Kitchen isnt like any cookbook ever before published. In it, Buettner visits kitchens in each of the five blue zones: Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; Sardinia, Italy; Yorba Linda, California (a Seventh Day Adventist community); and the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica. An earlier book, The Blue Zones Solution, also included recipes, but not presented in this way, with McLains vivid photography showing the physical beauty of the people and the food of blue zones. Its pages emanate with the warmth of human conviviality.

David and I are not cookbook writers. David and I are a writing and photography team for National Geographic, Buettner said. This book is essentially a 300-page National Geographic article, centered around food and recipes. And thats how we approached it. For the recipes, I didnt just go find some other book and copy them; I sat on stools in 80, 90 and 100-year-old womens kitchens, and I watched them. I wrote down fastidiously everything they did. I estimated quantities you know, they dont use cups or teaspoons or any of that crap. I captured these recipes, which by the way will be gone in half a generation.

The recipes from Buettners notebooks were then taken to a test kitchen and proofed out for exact quantities, and now run alongside hundreds of photos taken by McLain, which are also not the typical, prettified pictures usually found in cookbooks.

Not a single picture in the book is shot in a studio, Buettner said. Its all editorial and its all with the gifted David McLain. He shot the ingredients, the setting, the people, the cooking techniques, and then the rituals around it. So its a very different book than a cookbook.

Dan Buettner in the Costa Rica blue zone. Photo by Dan McLain/National Geographic

Buettner is well-known locally because he launched the first Blue Zones Project in the Beach Cities. The projects, which now number over 50 nationwide, are public health initiatives which take the wisdom derived from Buettners studies of actual blue zones and apply lessons programmatically; locally, the Blue Zones Project is administered by the Beach Cities Health District (see last weeks Easy Reader cover story, Tripping Over Health). Buettners central insight is that healthy behavior happens not when we focus on changing behavior, but when the environment in which we live makes healthier choices easier to make.

The Blue Zones Kitchen follows this ethos. Its easy to use. Not one of its 100 recipes requires more than a handful of ingredients. It is peasant food; simple, cheap, easy, and by the way healthy.

Its organized by genres of cooking, Buettner said. There is Greek, from Ikaria; Italian, from Sardinia; Asian, in Okinawa; Latin American, Costa Rica; and American, Loma Linda. So they are easily recognizable categories of food. They are just simple. You can add cheese if you want to some of them, but the quotidian day-to-day eating in blue zones was plant-based. They ate meat, but it was a celebratory food, and I dont need to put a recipe for roasted meat in so all the recipes are plant-based. And they all have the most important ingredient, which is taste. These recipes, theyve been cooked for at least 500 years in most of these places. The reason they survived is not because people think the recipes are healthy. Its because people like them. They are tasty.

Cowboy Jose Bonifacio in Costa Rica. Photo by Dan McLain/National Geographic

Another aspect of the book that sets it apart is its beautiful array of story, science, travel, and cultural exploration. For example, in Costa Rica Buettner found what he believes might be the most perfect breakfast in the world, featuring what locals call the tres hermanas, or three sisters: corn, beans, and squash. He recalls in loving detail enjoying this breakfast in the Cooperativa Nicoya, where a dozen women begin preparation before dawn each morning and people stop by on their way to work. The meal is the locally beloved gallo pinto, rice, and beans with garlic, onions, peppers and squash, served with freshly made tortillas, a vinegar-based hot sauce called chilero, and locally grown coffee.

At 6 a.m., the first customers file in, most of them market vendors or laborers, Buettner writes. They take seats on benches at long green tables. Cooperativa waitresses, wearing simple dresses and flip-flops, serve giant cups of weak local coffee, steaming plates of the gallo pinto, and baskets of warm tortillas. As muddy ranchero music plays from a distant radio, customers fill their tortillas with beans topped with chilero hot sauce. This is arguably the most perfect food combination ever, and for some it brings forth tears of joy.

The meal is perfect because tastes great while providing everything the human body needs for sustenance. The corn tortillas are whole-grain, low glycemic (meaning more slowly digested, absorbed, and metabolized) complex carbohydrates, Buettner reports, noting that the wood ash of the stoves breaks down the corns cell walls, thus making niacin available and freeing amino acids for absorption into the body. The black beans are rich in both antioxidants and fiber, which is colon-cleansing, lowers blood pressure and regulates insulin. Combined with rice, the beans form a perfect protein; the pepper sauce that tops it all off is a probiotic (meaning good for gut health). Even the coffee is rich in antioxidants. The total cost of the breakfast was $4.23.

Buettner writes that this meal is what the poorest people in Costa Rica subsist on. His research partners found that these very people have the longest telomeres the DNA tips that mark biological age of any in Costa Rica. He says their bodies tend to be a decade younger than their age would suggest.

Its really kind of the Zen of eating, Buettner said. Its so simple. Its like great sushi. Most cuisines are additive for example, French cuisine is cream and butter and herbs. Sushi is just beautifully one ingredient. This is three ingredients. Imagine slow-cooked beans; the beans are perfect, kind of al dente, they still have their flavor, they still have the anthocyanins, which are the anti-oxidants you find in blueberries. Add a roasted whole-grain corn tortilla: all it is whole grain corn patted down and roasted. And then some roasted squash. You put the beans in a tortilla, maybe put some hot sauce on it, or in Costa Rica its chilero, and man, you do cry tears of joyIts so easy and so cheap and the stuff is good for a long time.

Buettners blend of storytelling and science is so seamless you dont really realize you are learning. Simplicity is key. Part of this is his sources. We dont live in a time when we often have access to the elders of our tribe, and their practical, well-worn advice, as most previous generations of humanity did. Buettner shared a meal with another centenarian in Costa Rica, a 106-year-old former lumberjack named Jose Guevara.

Hed actually done a good bit of thinking about his longevity and boiled it down to three secrets: Start your day with fruit, eat beans at every meal, and practice absolute honesty, Buettner writes. Words to live by, methinks.

Much of the wisdom that comes from the blue zones is essentially remedial human training: knowledge that was baked into the way people lived for eons before the disruption caused by more modern ways of living.

Its relearning what our grandparents instinctively knew, Buettner said.

Women in Ikiaria work together in the kitchen. Photo by Dan McLain/National Geographic

The links in that chain are mostly unbroken in the blue zones. Generations know each other, and cook together. Meals are shared multi-generationally, and often communally. Some of the recipes in The Blue Zones Kitchen contain varying versions, as each village or family has its own idea of how to do things. The Melis family in Sardinia (nine siblings with a combined age of 852 years) shared their version of minestrone soup, which they told Buettner theyd eaten every day of their life. Another family shared another version.

A 100-year-old cooked me Sardinian minestrone, Buettner said. The rest of her family cooked me other things and then we sat down and drank a good bit of wine, Connoneau, which is almost always an accompaniment with meals there. And then toasts ensue, and you get that sort of perfect combination of familial warmth and alcohol, and theres no better drug.

There is science underlying the warm feeling of this scene. Sardinian minestrone is a pot of healthy amino acids with all the protein a human needs for sustenance along with huge does of fiber and healthy gut bacteria. Its cruciferous vegetablesonions, cabbage, kohlrabiregulate thyroid function, a key to longevity. And even the wine, Connoneau, is particularly flavonoid-rich and brimming with antioxidants. But the biggest factor underlying long-living is the gathering itself.

I didnt set out to try to write a cookbook from the beginning. I realized, though, that the runway for people for a healthier life is often through their mouth, Buettner said. But what makes it work, what makes it stick, and what makes it last is building a meaningful social network, or social circle, around the food. And that is in an almost hormonal senseif you are eating with somebody you like, you have less cortisol interference as compared to eating on the run or eating with some sort of existential stress, and there is a love and a joy in that which I believe adds to longevity. But more important than that, if the people you are running with are also eating largely a whole-food, plant-based diet, its not a chore. You are not getting tempted by the burgers and the baby back ribs and the chips and all the other crap that people gather around.

We are, in fact, genetically hardwired for human interaction. Previous generations of humans could not have fathomed the idea of fast food or how much we eat alone. Another common trait in all blue zones kitchens is they are social places.

We tend to be genetically endowed with a propensity for things that ensure our survival, Buettner said. And humans, unlike so many other mammals that havent been as successful, are eusocial. That weve been successful because we come together as a tribe. We naturally are drawn to each other and we can take on bigger tasks together than we can by ourselves. So to all of sudden fast forward to 2019 when everybody is imploding in their devices maybe for survivability, on its surface, we dont really need other humans. But we still have that genetic yearning for it, and the meal is the natural time to give in to that. Its the natural time to socialize because you are slowing down, you are sitting down.

Research shows that people who eat socially, particularly families, eat more nutritiously than those who eat alone.

Because when you are eating by yourself, it takes about 20 minutes for the full feeling to travel through your belly to your brain, Buettner said. So if you are eating by yourself to your favorite TV show and wolfing down your dinner, theres a very good chance that you will already be full long before your stomach knows it, long before your brain knows it. Conversely, if you are sitting down with four or five friends, you are having a conversation, you are telling jokes, you are laughing, then you take a bite of food you are less likely to overeat.

The biggest piece of advice implicit in the The Blue Zones Kitchen is simply to cook. The benefits are myriad. People in the blue zones, and those who cook in general, tend to rotate between the same 10 or 12 meals. They thus have a more consistent diet, meaning their immune systems dont have to work so hard to always counter different potential threats. A worn-out immune system is one of the things that catches up with us in older age when the body can no longer fight off cancer cells, among other things.

Cook at home. You dont have to buy my book. Theres lots of other books, Buettner said. I hear all the time, Well, I dont have time to cook. And if you take a moment and you think clearly, people who are eating junk food their whole life are probably shaving a decade off their life expectancy. If you take those 10 years and average them back through the rest of your life, youve got about 2.5 hours of a day of time that you could be spending on making good food. And youll have just as many hours in your lifetime. We fail. We get misled by a certain cultural thrust that is wrong.

I think there are a lot of people out there marketing longevity. The Blue Zones kind of genre is not just about getting more, piling on more years, its about quality along the way. Its a holistic look at longevity. And the value proposition is about 14 years. The maximum average life expectancy for humans is about 93 or 94. We are getting about 80 in America right about now, so we are leaving about 13 or 14 years on the table. We could be getting those years by living a blue zone lifestyle. But if you are living with purpose, you are socializing and connecting with friends, you have that faith-based component in place and that could be going to church, it could be going to yoga you are enjoying the journey. Its not just living long. Its living well.

It is, in a sense, the oldest story in the world, and one that is increasingly being forgotten. Buettner said that all the blue zones are increasingly being encroached upon by the disease of convenience. His reporting is documenting ways of life which are disappearing.

Okinawa in 1990 was a fantastically exotic place, and now its a jungle of Pizza Huts and A&W Root Beer. Junk food, Buettner said. Theres only a few little pockets of originality left. Costa Rica theres a damn KFC as you enter the city of Nicoya. And here is this beautiful food tradition that in Nicoya anyway its been around for 5,000 years, the Mesoamerican three sisters of corn, tortilla, beans, and squash. Which are three foods that can wholly sustain you. They are being pushed out by buckets of hormones-suffused chicken and burgers. Just like when they came to America, they are incredibly alluring. They are fast and they are cheap and they are like an orgasm in your mouth when you been used to eating sort of subtle flavors.

His mind drifts frequently to a scene on the coast of Ikaria. A woman named Athina was cooking in a kitchen crowded with women.

She is about 60, and shes been cooking for 50 years, and she learned it from her grandmother who learned it from her grandmother, Buettner said. So sitting on a stool in a tiny kitchen watching her workYou can sort of see the Aegean Sea out the kitchen window and you kind of see 500 years of history unfold. Above your head, there are all these pans, and there is this wonderful cacophony of chopping and pans bubbling and pans clattering and kids running around squealing and these sort of nomadic aromas of sage and oregano and rosemary and olive oil and the pungency of roasting squash. And Im sitting there with a glass of wine, the type of wine that is produced in Ikaria, the Pranos, the same wine that Ulysses gave the cyclops to get him drunk so he could knock him offthey are still drinking that wine in IkariaIts just happiness.

Read more:
The wisdom of ancient kitchens - Easy Reader News

The longevity of a business is less about how well it does in the good times, and more about how it fares through the rough patches. A farm being resilient can come in many forms, but usually comes down to the strength of the management team running it and the financial nimbleness of the overall operation.

Amy Cronin is a hog farmer, Nuffield scholar and leader of an expanding farm business in Ontario, Missouri, and Iowa. Along with her husband and business partner Mike, Cronin Family Farms has a goal of striving to be the best. They may not always get there, Cronin says, but thats the goal.

Our vision at Cronin Family Farms is Progressive. Prosperous. Best in class, she says.

Having navigated through low hog prices, a major business expansion, a barn fire and now taking on a farm diversification project, Cronin says that communicating ahead of these challenges and decisions is key. We needed to have a serious conversation about how we deal with problems. How we dealt with problems was the determining factor on whether we would or would not expand, she says. We decided to look at our problems and an opportunity. When I look back on it, that is building resiliency.

Its this mindset on viewing challenges differently and using them to better themselves and their business that has allowed their farm to navigate hardship. Moving on is important, says Cronin. They choose to face their problems head-on, put them to bed, and move on. And thats part of resiliency, too dealing with things thoroughly and right away. Its important, she says, to deal with what keeps you up at night.

Innovation and diversification also play a key role in the numbers side of the business. But thats not all about technology, its about management and people. Cronin says theyre always looking at ways to do things differently and better, and that could mean adopting a new management style or creating their own way to do something and incorporating that into the business.

Diversification is key to risk management, yes, but Cronin says they also balance business needs with human needs. Labour is a huge part of making everything work, and Cronin recognizes the need to care for themselves so they can lead a dynamic and fantastic team and take care of them, too.

Cronin uses the quote by Francis of Assisi to guide much of what they do. We start by doing whats necessary, then we do whats possible, and soon we can do the impossible, she says. That impossible right now is making pans for their older children coming back to the farm. Whats necessary and now possible is diversifying into the chicken business. Starting with whats necessary and mastering that, means they can then move on to expanding what is possible for their farm.

Hear more from Amy Cronin in conversation with Bern Tobin at the Agricultural Excellence Conference:

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Link:
Master the necessary, do whats possible to build resiliency into your farm - RealAgriculture