Memoir Mondays: Mrs. Kennedy and Me

Memoirs have the power to move us, connect with us and allow us to share life changing experiences with people we’d otherwise never have the chance to know. Every Monday, we’re pleased to feature a memoir and open a window to someone else’s life.

Over 50 years after she became the first lady, the world is still fascinated with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, including Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent assigned to protect her during her years in the White House. In Mrs. Kennedy and Me, Hill recounts the story of what it was like to be by her side from the beginning, through the birth of her sons John and Patrick, Patrick’s sudden death, through trips to Europe, Asia, and South America, and ultimately, through the dark days that followed the assassination of JFK, which he became known as the man who clung the sides of the car as it sped towards the hospital. He remained as her guard until the 1964 presidential election when he was assigned to President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Though always a professional relationship, save for a few small flirtations, this book tells Jackie Kennedy’s story through the eyes of a man who saw the highs and lows of it all. The book also compiles candid and personal photos of the Kennedys, some inscribed by the President and Mrs. Kennedy, and never-before-seen.

Take a look inside Mrs. Kennedy and Me.

The end of food as we know it?

Sitting down to an organic, locally-produced and nutritionally balanced meal – by which I mean scarfing a granola bar at my desk – I found myself reflecting on how food has determined the fate of human societies for the past 12,000 years. If your lunch isn’t prompting such musings, it’s likely you have not yet devoured Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, University of Guelph geography professor Evan D. G. Fraser and journalist Andrew Rimas’ sweeping history of food from the (not-so) Fertile Crescent to our contemporary food crisis.

 Cities, culture, art, government, and religion are founded on the creation and exchange of food surpluses. But eventually, inevitably, the crops fail, the fields erode, or the temperature drops, and the center of power shifts. Cultures descend into dark ages of poverty, famine, and war. It happened at the end of the Roman Empire, when slave plantations overworked Europe’s and Egypt’s soil and drained its vigor. It happened in the fourteenth century, when medieval societies crashed in famine and plague, and again in the nineteenth century, when catastrophic colonial schemes plunged half the world into a poverty from which it has never recovered. And today, even though we live in an age of astounding agricultural productivity and genetically modified crops, our food supplies are once again in peril.

 Check out Evan Fraser’s interview in the Globe and Mail to discover the three false assumptions our global food empire is built on.

 If you are in the Toronto area, come hear author Evan Fraser speak at Foodprint Toronto on July 31.

What are your concerns about the future of food? Leave a comment and let me know.