Ordinary Hero: Denise Cerreta

Denise Cerreta wants to eliminate world hunger. She started in her own neighborhood, Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2003, when she opened One World Cafe, serving delicious, in-season organic food. Her vision was to provide a living wage to each of her employees, turn no one away for lack of money, and care for the planet by minimizing waste.

One more thing. Patrons would pay what they felt their meal was worth--in cash or in a work exchange.

• We are dedicated to eliminating world hunger.
• We are dedicated to serving organic unprocessed food.
• We are dedicated to feeding and including all members of our community.
• We are dedicated to eliminating waste in the food industry.
• We believe that we can trust our customers to be inspired, honest and fair in their exchange of money and/or work for the fresh, gourmet, organic food we prepare both mindfully and in a heartfelt way each day.
• We will keep believing.

One World Everybody Eats vision statement

One of Cerreta's chief concerns in opening One World Cafe was the tremendous food waste from commercial kitchens. American restaurants are particularly notorious for serving enormous portions. How many times does your order arrive at the table piled high enough to serve a family of four? Do you ask for a box and bag to take the leftovers home? How often do you (or your dog) actually eat them? Or do they languish in the refrigerator, pushed ever further back, until one day you open them to find something that looks like a science experiment gone awry?

Patrons would pay what they felt their meal was worth--in cash or in a work exchange.

When Cerreta's guests choose their prices and their portions, she says they tend to take only what they will eat, eliminating much of the food waste we see so often in traditional establishments.

Serving those less fortunate, and helping them retain their dignity, is another of Cerreta's objectives. One hour's work in the restaurant earns a voucher for one meal. Out of work parent? If your children are under eight, they eat free on the same one-meal voucher. If you have neither money nor time, there is always at least one staple dish, such as rice and lentils or rice and dahl, available to the hungry with no strings attached.

In 2006, spurred by requests from all over the country for help establishing similar ventures, Cerreta filed for non-profit 501(3)c status and founded the One World Everybody Eats Foundation. Since then, she has referred to the cafe as a community kitchen. The foundation explains the change this way.

Since our beginning, we have recognized the spontaneous community building that happens as a result of our venue, which we now call a "community kitchen" rather than a "cafe". We also believe that nothing will further our vision better than having the strength of community behind us.

Denise Cerreta in "Message from Founder Denise Cerreta"

Eventually, Cerreta established gardens to support another of their founding principles: To serve wholesome, nutritious, organically grown foods. Much of the organic produce used in the kitchen comes from the garden in this image. Some also comes from kindly gardeners who produce far more than they can eat, preserve and give away.

These values and principles are among those that make Denise Cerreta a fine candidate for the Ordinary Heroes Award.

The reason our heroes are so important to us is because they do extraordinary things. They take risks, venturing into untraveled territory, often with inadequate preparation. High risk almost guarantees some failure. Mistakes will be made.

It's not easy launching a restaurant which expects its patrons to set the price they're willing to pay for their food. Keeping the cafe going for six years borders on the miraculous. There have been less-than miraculous bumps along the way. Cerreta herself has said more than once that she was ill-prepared for the venture.

In October 2008, she and the foundation's board reportedly fired its "long-time" manager, which in turn spurred the entire staff to walk out, alleging bounced paychecks and disrespectful treatment.

The One World Everybody Eats web site does not address the staff allegations directly, though you will find mention of it in some of the articles posted on their newsroom page. While I hope Cerreta will confront the allegations head on at some point, her initial vision to serve the hungry as well as the affluent, and expect each to pay as they are able for the bounty they receive, along with the courage and stamina she has shown in keeping faith with her vision, are heroic acts at a time in which we hear so much of rampant greed and outright swindling (Bernie Madoff, anyone?).

Despite the near loss of the One World venue, as Cerreta calls it, she and One World Everybody Eats are back on track in 2009 and continue to inspire others. There are now five similar kitchens in the United States, in Denver, CO, Spokane, WA, Charleston, SC, Durham, NC, and a brand new one in Arlington, TX.

Cerreta plans to focus more and more on helping others found community kitchens with no menu and no prices. "Our goal is to continue to move the One World Everybody Eats vision to larger audiences," she says in a personal message. She continues:

We see that mentoring and networking fledgling efforts around the country is where our energy can be best spent. And we are working to connect those people and efforts. Because by letting everyone who is striving to establish their own effort in their own community see they are not alone, we think it may help the establishment of successful endeavors nationwide even faster. And we relish the role and opportunity to help the no-menu, no-prices community building model to fruition everywhere.

To that end, Cerreta travels wherever she is needed to assist in establishing a new community kitchen. She has volunteered as much as a month of her time, working the counter in new kitchens. She and the foundation provide a free online how-to, "Spirit in Business: A Guide for Starting a Community Kitchen," (pdf format) which they are planning to expand to a full book.



For visioning a world free of hunger, for trusting her patrons to pay a fair price for the food she serves, for assuring no one who enters her doors leaves hungry whatever their circumstances, for setting the standard of serving wholesome, organically grown, nutritious foods, for encouraging other food purveyors to consider the no menu-no price model, for working diligently to eliminate food waste and for making a commitment to pay employees a living wage, this week's Ordinary Hero Award is humbly and gratefully offered to Denise Cerreta.

Images of the One World community kitchen and garden courtesy One World Everybody Eats newsroom.

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How to build Ordinary when Iran is beating and shooting its citizens and North Korea threatens to annihilate us all

Image by .faramarz via Flickr

While every aspect of Ordinary exists or has existed somewhere on the planet, the world of Ordinary does not yet exist, as is so evident with recent events in Iran and North Korea.

People in Iran risk their lives every day to send us images of the violence they endure. The images shock the soul and tear the heart. Documented and undocumented stories abound of police, military and militia kidnappings, beatings, arrests, imprisonments, torture; of hospitals forced to turn over bodies and the wounded to be carted off by government officials to unknown destinations; of families of the dead removed from their homes and relocated to undisclosed locations; of hired thugs from foreign lands wielding clubs and axes indiscriminately on men, women, pregnant women, children.*

Image by .faramarz via Flickr

In its efforts to silence its people, the Iranian government has imprisoned journalists, foreign embassy officials and staff, politicians, professors, students, and ordinary citizens. Nightly, the government sends its militia to raid homes, tearing out and destroying their satellite dishes so the people cannot receive news from the outside world.*

Watching the government beat, torture and shoot its citizens in cold blood, I learn that this recent violence is only that. Recent. Documented stories tell of decades of imprisoned, tortured and disappeared journalists and citizens, one individual after another.

Image by .faramarz via Flickr

Among the videos tonight is one, in six segments, not of this uprising but of the public execution at six o'clock in the morning a few years ago of a sixteen year old girl, Atefah Sahaaleh, for crimes against chastity. Coerced and raped by a 51 year old man, Atefah had been sentenced to die for adultery. As they do in Iran these days, and as the story revealed with graphic examples, they hanged this young woman from an industrial crane. Her rapist received one hundred lashes. She had received many more before her death.

There are more such stories. The number seems endless. I am in a stupor of grief and shock.

All this from a country who desperately wants the nuclear bomb. Which brings me to North Korea. They already have the nuclear bomb and have trained several missiles on the United States. Of course, the bombs are not aimed only at the United States. South Korea is most at risk right now, and even China and Russia are concerned enough that they joined the United Nations in sanctions against North Korea, a rare stand for these traditional allies.

As if irreversible climate change were not already occurring, as if the world economy were not struggling to reverse a nose dive, as if water scarcity and ozone depletion did not threaten all of human kind, we ordinary citizens once again face the imminent threat of nuclear annihilation and the sure, very graphic, up close and personal images of human beings beating and slaughtering other human beings in a political power struggle.

If we choose to make ourselves aware, it is not difficult to find similar stories in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Nepal, and a host of other countries. (In fact, the United States State Department today lists travel warnings for no less than twenty-nine hot spots around the world where upheaval and violence make visitation dangerous. Where there is violence, human rights abuses are almost always found.)

Image via Wikipedia

All big picture stuff, right? So how do we build Ordinary when we are faced with so much violence and threat? What can you or I possibly do to mitigate any of these situations?

Turns out there is a lot we can do in regard to human rights. We must honor the people in Iraq and elsewhere around the world who have risked their lives to show us the horrors they face and endure. We must take action, however and wherever we can. Below is a short list of organizations that work to protect and promote human rights. Several have a page of direct action you can take right now. Go to them. Find at least one action you can take today. Make a date with yourself for the next action you will take and keep it. When you do, make another date and another. Knowledge is responsibility. We no longer have the luxury of pretending we are so far isolated from these world events that we have no power to act. Please act now.

• Human Rights Watch
• Amnesty International
• Human Rights Advocates
• The Advocates for Human Rights

For a more comprehensive list, visit the Human Rights Web Resource Page.

That brings us to the second big issue. How to respond to the nuclear threats posed by North Korea, as well as the numerous other countries, including our own, who possess the power to destroy the world many times over? The following are a very few of the organizations that work to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons around the world. They too have action pages.

• Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
• Abolition 2000: Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons
• Council for a Livable World

For a comprehensive list, including links to webs sites on international law, visit Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's web links page.

To the direct actions available to you on the above web pages, I add stand for peace. Standing for peace every day, even for five minutes a day, makes a difference in my personal life. It also gives me the courage to watch a few of the videos from Iran each night and broaden my personal commitment to taking action to promote peace.

Can any of this work possibly be enough? Who can say? I know I cannot continue as though I don't know the people of Iran are asking for my help and my voice. So I write this. I pray. I stand for peace. This is how I am building the world of Ordinary right now.

Please, can we talk? Just as we pile one brick on another to build a community center, so we can build a peaceful world, one non-violent action at a time. In the comments below, tell us what you are doing What single step will you take this week? What date will you make with yourself for additional action? What other ideas about making peace here and abroad can you contribute?

*With the exception of the two relatively tame images above, I have not linked to the articles, images and videos that document these events, but if you feel compelled to see and judge for yourself, you won't have far to search on YouTube or most any search engine to which you subscribe.

The Iran images in this post are used with permission under

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fhashemi/ / CC BY 2.0.

The I wage peace image is courtesy Bruce Barrett.

Ordinary Hero: Iranian Woman

Image by misterarasmus via Flickr

After its recent election, and in the face of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of protesters demanding an investigation into what they suspected was a fraudulent result, the Iranian government silenced foreign reporters. The government also attempted to silence individual Iranians by restricting their access to the Internet.

Many brave Iranians have found ways to get news of their protest rallies, and the violent government response, out of the country. Yesterday may have been the bloodiest day yet. Some have dubbed it Iran's Tienanmen Square. Others call it a massacre. Many Iranians posted horrific images on Twitter, YouTube and FaceBook. Reportedly, whenever they post, they risk discovery, arrest, beatings and perhaps death.

One woman somehow managed to call CNN directly and spoke live to reporter Ivan Watson. We do not learn her name, presumably because of the danger to her and her family, and it is difficult to verify her story. In the video, though, Watson indicates to her that they have received similar reports from other sources inside the country, and I have watched a slew of video clips tonight that support her allegations as well.

Here is her story, in her own words, as reported by CNN. Warning: It is a deeply disturbing account.

Update 6/25/09: Apparently the video above has been removed or disabled, at least temporarily. Another user has posted the same video here. Please let me know in the comments below if this one disappears as well. Meanwhile, I will try to learn why the video is no longer working on the original site and will update when and if I learn anything.

Anonymous, traumatized, terrified, the caller nevertheless risked her life to share what she had witnessed and to plea for help.

For refusing to be silent in the face of injustice, for standing with courage and doing what she can to help those suffering around her, for working with the resources at her disposal to bring the world a little further from the chaos of reprisal and bloodshed and a little closer to cooperation and peace, the Ordinary Heroes Award is gently offered to this unnamed Iranian woman with hope and prayers that she and the people of her country soon may live in peace and harmony.

It is also given with a desire to answer her call for help.

Because this woman, and so many other Iranians, are successful in broadcasting their stories to the world, we who read, listen and watch in horror are forced to accept once again that unmitigated cruelty exists in the world. To stand by and do nothing would be to collude with the perpetrators.

I take only one side, that of compassionate peace, and that leaves me with no clear, direct path to be of use to the caller and to the people suffering. I am mindful, though, of the powerful message of Sharon Mehdi's book, The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering. I have witnessed the miraculous results that can be found in focus and prayer, particularly when more than one person is engaged, and so I call on the grandmothers, and any who would stand with us, to stand for peace.

Stand in your churches, your homes your places of work, on your street corners and buses and playgrounds. Stand for peace. Stand with the intent that this woman's anguish be healed, her country be healed, and that the leaders of the country be healed. Now is the time.

Cranky grandmother stands for peace

Image by tomeppy via Flickr

The first couple of weeks I stood for peace, I noticed that I seemed to be, well, rather cranky. I found myself showing irritation to people on the bus and sidewalk to whom I would ordinarily give way. In fact, I cursed out loud the automatic checkout machine at a supermarket I patronize infrequently.

Its disembodied voice insisted I had more items in the checkout bay and wouldn't let me pay. Worse, once it took my money, it immediately chided me to pick up my packages and exit while I waited for my change and receipt. I fumed in, ahem, colorful language. When the attendant standing nearby laughed, instead of chuckling with her at my frustration and inanity, I frowned and told her how much I dislike shopping in her store, perhaps a little more loudly than I wish to recall. The poor woman! It's not her fault her company chooses to remove the small bit of human exchange we enjoy while shopping.

As a young woman, I dreaded my weekly grocery shopping trips, trying to fit our growing family's needs into a budget that was not growing with us, but the friendly banter with the checkout clerks at the supermarket, meat, milk and health food stores (yes, shopping was an all-day chore) made up for the stress and sometimes mitigated the headache I almost always developed by the end of the day, when I knew I would be faced with my husband's scowls and complaints over the money I had spent. (Did I buy the ice cream, candy and cookies he bought when he shopped? No! Frugal housewife that I was, I avoided all empty-calorie foods.) Eventually, I wised up and delegated the shopping to him. No more shoehorning the budget. No more headaches. No more grumpy husband. Lots of sweets and salty foods in the house. Now that's one way to make peace at home, folks, though it wreaks havoc on the diet.

So when I found myself behaving increasingly surly those first few weeks, I was puzzled. Here I was, enjoying this delightful interlude of quiet, humbling peace each evening, yet uttering mild profanities under my breath when unconscious or just plain rude urbanites bumped into me on the street or spit in my face while coughing on the bus.

Now I ask you, how was I making peace?

One sunny morning, my sweetie and I ambled down the street with our granddaughter in the stroller. Repeatedly, groups of individuals approached from the opposite direction, spaced four abreast across the entire width of the sidewalk with no sign of shifting to make room for oncoming traffic (us). Customarily, we moved as close to the right as we could, but inevitably, the nearest oncomers bumped or brushed us as they passed, apparently oblivious to our presence. This time, instead of pulling behind my partner and the stroller, obstinately, I held my ground. The young man immediately in my path ran smack dab into me, full on, as though I were invisible. (Believe me, it took effort not to dodge at the last second.) To his credit, while his friends snickered and chortled, he turned back after our collision with the briefest "Sorry!" I, on the other hand, scowled in return. Now I ask you, how was I making peace?

I belie my intent to make peace when I behave with intolerance or worse, without compassion.

My face and my name are on public web pages for the world to see. When I'm out and about, since my readership is quite small, it's unlikely someone will recognize the crabby old woman muttering under her breath about rude bus drivers or flashing a "What's with you?" hand and stare at the impatient driver honking while she hobbles across the street. Still, making my stand for peace public also makes me responsible, not just for being the peace I want to see in the world, but for exemplifying peaceful responses to annoying situations. I belie my intent to make peace when I behave with intolerance or worse, without compassion.

The good news is, standing for peace every day raises my awareness to the minute and varied ways I can bring more peace to my life, and that brings me a little closer to the vision of The Village of Ordinary and the respect the villagers show for one another and for peoples far beyond their village. That's a good thing.



If you feel inspired to stand for peace a few minutes a day, I encourage you to Tweet about it and use the hashtag #5minutes. By Mother's Day next year, perhaps there will be millions of us standing for peace in our homes and gardens, churches and parks, and on the steps of City Hall.

My gratitude to Flickr member tomeppy for making the image above available under Creative Commons 2.0 Generic license.

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The Return of Nutrition, or does your tomato splat and split when it falls?

Image via Wikipedia

Last week, blogger Ryan Harb, a budding permaculturist, posted an article on The Return of Nutrition (pdf file). The article begins: Did you ever wonder why today's supermarket-purchased fruits taste like mostly water?

I know I have. I was fortunate during my daughters' early childhood to provide them with fresh, organic fruits and vegetables from our small garden. They may still have body memories of the rich flavors, textures and juice of the apples, pears, berries, tomatoes, and many vegetables we grew together. Thanks to their grandmother, who brought a seedling from her favorite peach tree shortly after their father and I married, every autumn we gathered more succulent, sweet, fragrant peaches than we could possibly eat. The juice ran down our arms when we bit into them, so good we licked it off shamelessly, rather than lose a drop.

Many children then and many more children now have no idea that a true peach is not hard and crunchy like an apple, but soft and squirty with juice. Nor do they know the acidic deliciousness of ripe tomato, nearly bursting from its thin skin. If a small child, gnoshing sun-heated tomatoes from the vine let one slip through her fingers when I was growing up, it split, spilling its seeds and fluid on impact, however soft the soil. How long has it been since you last dropped a tomato--supermarket-bought, organic, or farmer's market--only to watch it thump to the floor with nary a dent?

Bringing back good-tasting produce is more than a mission to satisfy the senses, according to The Return of Nutrition author. It's a mission to feed our bodies foods rich in the nutrients we need to thrive, fight disease and live long. The answer is in the soil.

You see, as Big Agriculture has co-opted ever larger tracts--square mile after square mile--of land to monoculture food-growing factories, fueled by petrochemical fertilizers, antibiotics and tons of pesticides, the soil in which the crops are grown has become merely a holding material, it's own rich nutrients systematically stripped away.

The people of the Real Food Campaign and Remineralize the Earth, both featured in The Return of Nutrition, seek to replenish our depleted soils that we may once again taste foods rich with vitamins and minerals, trace elements, bright colors and the flavors and juices some of us are fortunate enough to remember. I encourage you to take time to read the article.

Reclaiming our soils is a matter of survival for our species, and not only ours. Many of the animals with whom we share the planet are as dependent as we on the nutritive qualities of our soils. Without good soil their habitats, already diminished by ever-expanding human settlement, are less and less fertile, increasing their exposure to disease and possibly hastening extinction.

There's more, and it's good. Imagine simple fruits and vegetables so mouthwatering delicious that we don't need heavy sauces or sugary concoctions to make them palatable. Imagine food so satisfying that we experience no residual cravings and leave that post-dinner pint of ice cream in the freezer without regret or feeling of sacrifice. Imagine the colors, scents and textures of food so pleasurable that cooking and dining became a family affair again, the nightly meal a time of energetic discussion and creativity.

It is no accident that food is an integral part of the vision of the Village of Ordinary. Villagers take direct responsibility for their health and well-being, and much of that depends on the foods with which they fuel and nourish their bodies. More, they genuinely enjoy the time they spend together preparing and eating meals.

I'll be researching and posting my findings on food often in the coming weeks and months. Not only is a local, sustainable model important to the story, but some climate researchers feel that reclaiming our soils and returning to smaller, family-style agriculture may be the single most important way to slow global climate change and ensure plenty of fresh drinking water for generations to come. Our food source and supply is that important.

So important, in fact, is this issue that I urge you to delve deep and engage in dialogue with me, with your family and friends and with your elected officials. Some of our most foremost and respected scientists believe we need to solve these problems by 2020. That's just eleven short years from now. Others think that's an optimistic figure. One thing is certain. There is no time to waste, so please share your own food journey and resources in the comments section below.

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