Our demented devotion to the car and disdain for trains drives me nuts, so I thought it was awfully fitting that National Transportation Week happened to coincide with National Mental Health Month. This ironic bit of synergy was brought to my attention by Aaron Woolf, the acutely observant producer/director of King Corn whose latest documentary,Beyond The Motor City, boldly repurposes Detroit, home of the auto industry and spawner of sprawl, as the potential birthplace for a mass transit revival.

Sounds incongruous? Improbable? In fact, as Beyond The Motor City reveals, Detroit, like so many other American cities, had an excellent public transit system before the car became king and our railways plunged into a steep decline that continues to this day.

The eternally underfunded Amtrak limps along on life support despite six straight years of record ridership. Some stimulus money has been allocated for what passes for high speed transit in this country, but too many folks who live in rural regions where there are no trains at all begrudge the very notion that their tax dollars ought to help fund mass transit in more densely populated states.

So, while China's poured $350 billion dollars over the past decade into a high-speed rail system that can go up to 220 mph, the nation that gave the world Back To The Future lurches Forward Into The Past (apologies to The Firesign Theater).

It's shocking to see the once-glorious Michigan Central Station looking like some kind of Roman ruin, decayed and abandoned. But it's equally eerie to see large swaths of open land in the middle of downtown Detroit where houses once stood. Wide boulevards evoke phantom drivers who abandoned Detroit as its fossil fueled fortunes declined.

But where some see only decay, Woolf envisages renewal. Like his fellow filmmakers Mascha and Manfred Poppenkso, whose documentary Grown In Detroit focuses on a high school program that teaches pregnant teens how to farm on a former playground, Woolf has faith in Detroit's ability to rise from the ashes of the auto industry's flame-out and reinvent itself.

Is that really so crazy? I'd argue that it's even crazier to insist that we can go on worshipping at the altar of the auto.

Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Our stubborn reliance on fossil fuels and apparent allergy to alternative transportation are a slight variation; we do nothing, over and over again. Coal mines blow up, oil rigs explode, we just keep truckin', uh-huh.

I bet you didn't evenknow this was National Transportation Week. Maybe you missed the stirring proclamation that President Obama phoned in from some socialist parallel universe where American tax payers are willing to pony up for progress:

Today, smart, sustainable development, coupled with quality public transportation, has created more livable and environmentally sustainable communities for all to enjoy. By reducing isolation and bringing neighborhoods together, we can continue to increase access to good jobs, affordable housing, safe streets and parks, and a healthy food supply.

Working together to upgrade our Nation's transportation infrastructure, we will lay a new foundation for long-term growth, security, and prosperity in America and give future generations a transportation system that is second to none.

Well, sure, because who would want to leave our kids the crappy, bottom-of-the-barrel system we have now? Tom Vanderbilt, the author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), studied pre-war train schedules and found that there are trains in this country that actually take several hours longer to reach their destination now than they did seventy or so years ago.

So, while Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan and most of Europe all have high speed rail systems or are in the process of building them, we remain as mired in oil as the fossils stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits.

Rachel Maddow ran a devastating segment on her show recently entitled "Doomed To Repeat It" documenting decades of oil-fueled disasters. Watch it and weep as presidents from Nixon to Bush make phony pledges to wean us off fossil fuels, and current politicians still chant "Drill, Baby, Drill."

As Maddow noted, the 1969 Union Oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara helped launch the birth of Earth Day the following year. Maddow wasn't even born yet, but I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, so I remember the 1973 "oil shock," the gas rationing, the smog alerts--just a regular part of the weather forecast--telling us not to play outside.

Most of all, though, I remember the feeling of being trapped, stranded in the suburbs; it drove me crazy that my mom had to drive me pretty much everywhere. You've heard of early adopters? I was an early rejecter; a kinder Kunstler, deeply alienated by our car-centric culture.

We equate cars with freedom, but how liberating is it, really, to be saddled with a long commute, or stuck circling around the block hunting for a parking spot?

Woolf gave a terrific interview to the St Lou Jew recently (gotta love their motto--"young. yid. younited") to whom he expressed a similar sentiment:

I think we have improperly come to conflate the car with the idea of freedom in this country. It was easier to say that cars and freedom were connected when oil was $11 a barrel and before we began to feel so un-free on our myriad clogged highways. For far too long, public transit has come to be thought of as the transit of last resort. But what form will a 21st century transportation landscape take?...

...In my parents' generation, everyone wanted to move to the suburbs, in your generation we are seeing a yearning to be part of a dense urban community. Maybe there's another kind of freedom in NOT having a car. We once imagined infrastructure in a way that would make us free, but that so-called freedom is totally unsustainable.

National Transportation Week may be over, but we still have another whole week to celebrate National Mental Health month. So if you're feeling depressed about our ongoing failure to address our energy needs in a rational way, allow me to prescribe a viewing of Beyond The Motor City--you can watch it in its entirety on PBS's Blueprint America website, or better yet, see if it's coming to a big screen near you.

As Woolf told stloujew:

...in terms of a national vision for transportation, America has radically transformed itself before...but really only once in a generation. I think we are at that point in our generation where we can once again transform.

When it comes to meeting our energy needs, take it from one of the filmmakers who brought you King Corn: ethanol ain't gonna cut it. Can we train the masses to embrace mass transit? Aaron Woolf thinks so, and I hope he's right.

In Kentucky, the GOP's "chosen one" for an open seat,
endorsed by the current Senate GOP leader,
lost to Rand Paul, whose father Ron Paul
was a presidential primary pariah just 2 years ago.

In Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln now faces a run-off --
yet her challenge isn't because she's an incumbent
but rather because she's a corporate conservadem
who, more than any other Dem, acts like a Republican.

And people ooh & ahh that Specter lost the primary,
but within the past year, he was a GOP Senator,
something Sestak and PA voters didn't forget.

So you're in trouble when you're endorsed by the GOP,
vote with the GOP or are associated with the GOP.

Pundits shout: "Look out, incumbents!"
But I'd warn Republicans that now may be a time
to rethink their opposition to unemployment benefits.

Tell me I'm wrong or toast that I'm right,
but do it face-to-face and pint-to-pint
as we trade our views and sip some booze
at your local progressive social club

DRINKING LIBERALLY
Find - or start - a chapter near you.

In allowing more corporate money in elections,
the Supreme Court made a sub-par decision.
But what kind of decision is Obama's nominee:
subtly superb, or simply a sound & solid substitute?

The financial sector sunk our economy,
while their own rewards still skyrocket --
but are the proposed reforms to strengthen the system
serious, substantive steps or silly sideshow charades?

BP's steadily spreading oil slick shocked us
& the spilling has helped slow the call for drilling,
but where is the significant sense of real reform
to create a sensible, sustainable energy policy?

Obama inherited his office from a subprime President
& these crises give him the chance to call for change.

But he needs to step up if he's going to turn
subprime situations into supreme opportunities.

Share a toast to possibilities as your share the night
with like-minded lefties & liberal libations
at your local, progressive social club.

DRINKING LIBERALLY
Find - or start - a chapter near you.

Remember when Fox pundit Michelle Malkin accused Rachael Ray of being a terrorist sympathizer because she wore a Middle Eastern-ish scarf in a Dunkin' Donuts ad? I'm not sure what was more absurd about that episode: Malkin's unhinged hysteria, or Dunkin' Donuts' profile in cowardice (they yanked the ad.)

But Malkin got one thing right: Rachael Ray is far more radical than I even dared hope. She took Capitol Hill by storm yesterday, armed with some very sharp talking points, and fired them directly at the lawmakers who actually have the power to improve the lousy school lunches we're dis-serving our kids:

"How could you go to any state in the union and say you are not for an extra couple of cents to eradicate hunger, to make our kids healthier, stronger, better focused? It doesn't make any sense that you would even have to have a long conversation about that, to me."

And does it make any sense that anyone could object to the idea of America's farmers growing more fruits and vegetables, as recommended in the White House's just-released report on childhood obesity? Yet, as the Washington Post's Jane Black reported yesterday, the suggestion that our agricultural policies should support the production of fresh, wholesome foods is sure to be controversial.

Why? Because the USDA has a bad case of schizophrenia: it's supposed to look out for the 'little people'--presumably that includes our school children--by helping us eat healthy, but it's simultaneously tasked with championing the interests of Big Ag, which profits from turning commodity crops into cheap processed foods that cause ill health.

So the USDA has historically marginalized fruits and vegetables as "specialty crops" and encouraged our farmers to grow more feed corn and soy. And Congress won't allocate sufficient funds to pay the cost of feeding those "special" fruits and vegetables to our apparently not-so-special kids.

Ray reportedly told Congress, "Find the money now and get it done or you are going to be part of sinking our ship down the line."

Ray teamed up with another powerful New Yorker, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, to lobby the folks who hold the purse strings to the Child Nutrition Act. I had the opportunity, thanks to my Living Liberally colleague Claire Silberman, to meet Gillibrand at a private lunch in NYC last week, and was gratified to hear firsthand about all the initiatives she's spearheading to transform the way we feed our kids.

Why do we even have to debate the notion that we should feed our kids real food? It shouldn't be a partisan issue, and it shouldn't be a regionally divisive issue pitting the Corn Belt against the Arugula Belt (i.e., any community with a population dense and affluent enough to support a farmers' market and/or a Whole Foods.)

But we live in such a bizarrely partisan era that a humble salad green like arugula has become shorthand for supposed liberal lunacy. James Godsil, the Milwaukee mover and shaker behind the awesome urban ag project Sweet Water Organics and Growing Power board member, is on a mission to rescue arugula, aka "rocket," as it's known in Europe, from its current status as a symbol of all things socialist and restore it to its rightful place on our plates, regardless of region or social status. As he wrote on the Milwaukee Renaissance website:

It is a stupefying fact that our president was mocked for sharing his love of arugula.

Godsil's "Arugula as Birthright" campaign seeks to get kids all over the country psyched about growing, and savoring, fresh salad greens, while also learning invaluable lessons:

Imagine a school with a principal and one teacher committed to affording each and every student a taste, for starters, regular tastes eventually, and growing classes, ultimately, of arugula and spinach.

Then imagine a school with a composting and vermiculture program that gave our students a chance to learn about turning urban waste streams into the world's most nutrient-rich soil, and then some hands on experience in science, math, biology, chemistry, and construction, creating raised bed gardens, even hoop houses, for their school edible playgrounds.

We need grassroots activists with Godsil's vision and passion, we need celebrities like Ray who is willing to use her star wattage to turn up the heat on Congress, and we need politicians like Gillibrand, a mother of young children who appears willing to challenge our long-entrenched Iowa-based cornarchy.

To to see Ray bounding through the Beltway demanding that our politicians start showing true family values by allocating more money to give our kids better food is a dream come true for me.

Will Agribiz astroturfers accuse her of treason for conspiring in a a terroirist plot--with a Brit, no less--to foist fresh, healthy foods on America's youth?

When Oliver appeared on Ray's show recently to talk about 'his' Food Revolution and his desire to support Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign, Ray told Oliver:

No matter where your representatives or your congress people are from, this is something we all care about as a country, and we're not asking, we're demanding change!

I was duly impressed by her genuine enthusiasm for the First Lady's endeavor, and I also applauded her for enlisting the resources of her non-profit Yum-O! and the powerful platform of the Rachael Ray show to reward one of my own personal heroes, Pressure Cooker star Wilma Stephenson.

But I had no idea Ray would put her money where her self-proclaimed "big Sicilian mouth" is. Will wonders never cease? Let's give Ray a shout-out, and while we're at it, let's let Senator Gillibrand know we're thankful for her efforts as a member of the Ag Committee to bring "specialty crops" out of left field. And speaking of bringing greens out of left field, won't you please join James Godsil in his quest to stop shameless partisans from soiling arugula's reputation? Please email him at godsil.james@gmail.com if you share his conviction that arugula should be a uniter, not a divider.

Chicago hip hop artist D-Nick The Microphone Misfit teamed up with B-Boy Super inLight to create "Abnormality", a track for the opening of Graffiti and Grub, the Chicago health food store founded by activist LaDonna Redmond. Their video highlights the physical health issues brought on by artificial, processed foods and encourages us all to look at what we're putting into our bodies.

D-Nick and Super inLight both embrace the acronym HIP HOP for "Healthy Independent People Helping Other People" and they are doing just that, using their talents to get the word out that "Eating healthy is the first step in disease prevention." D-Nick has entered the video in The One Chicago, One Nation film contest, whose goal is to reward "videos that tell the stories of people in Chicago from different backgrounds working together for the common good."

Please watch "Abnormality", share it with friends, and show your support by voting for D-Nick--voting ends on May 9th.

Lyrics to "Abnormality" by D-Nick The Microphone Misfit:

Freedom from disease and abnormality/
Cause you don't wanna have that stuff affecting your reality/
C'mon.....

I was Chillin' with my brother Super InLight/
We were shooting the breeze getting our Mind right/
Laughing, talking, politics, and current events/
Buggin'out about a lot of things that don't make sense/

And then Super all of a sudden got an urge from his tummy/
He looked up and said, "Yo D! I'm kind of hungry"/
"Help ya self in the kitchen there is food in the cabinet/
He opened up the cabinet and said "I ain't having it/

There ain't nothing in here except for junk food/
If I eat this It will put me in a junk mood/
No disrespect D don't mean to be rude/
But Lays chips, French dip c'mon man duuude/

I had no idea you were eating like this/
Why would you ever put that on your grocery list/
This so called food ain't meant for a human/
If I eat this then my bowels won't be movin'/

C'mon Super don't you think you're jumping the gun/
I just eat this when I'm kicking back and havin' some fun/
I don't really need to eat nothing organically grown/
Unless you wanna make your body cancer's permanent home/

Eating healthy is the first step in disease prevention/
It also cuts down on hypertension/
There's a few more things I'd like to mention
If you'll sit back and pay attention

(Chorus)

Freedom from disease and abnormality/
Cause you don't wanna have that stuff affecting your reality/
Freedom from disease and abnormality/
Cause you don't wanna have that stuff affecting your reality/

You wouldn't pay your bills with counterfeit money/
So why would you put something counterfeit in your tummy/
You won't give ya mama artificial love/
So why would you feast on artificial grub/...

Now that's something to think about/...

While information is leaking out /
From the lies the scandal from the food pyramid/
The sucka's who invented that need to do a bid*/

You want...

Freedom from disease and abnormality/
Cause you don't wanna have that stuff affecting your reality/
Freedom from disease and abnormality/
Cause you don't wanna have that stuff affecting your reality/

We all knew off-shore drilling was dirty business
& that we should be investing in energy alternatives
yet it took a catastrophic (but not unprecedented) spill
to get Obama's admin to rethink its policy.

We all knew the banks were on a binge of bad bets
& we needed new policy to slow down the sector
yet it took catastrophic (but not unprecedented) excess
to raise the public ire to push for reform.

We all know dangerous, xenophobic anger is out there,
seen in anti-immigrant, pro-gun and birther movements.
What catastrophic (but not unprecedented) violence
will have to happen before we call out hate as hate?

It's tough to contain oil, corruption & hatred --
as soon as they spill, it's already too late.

Yet we still haven't learned from precedents
& our culture encourages: "Spill, baby, spill."

Join us to pour out your heart & ideas
as we pour a pitcher and try not to spill
at your local progressive social club.

DRINKING LIBERALLY
Find - or start - a chapter near you.

Last year, Living Liberally needed your help to keep operating. You came through for us, and we have kept going strong, collaborating with organizations like the SEIU, spreading our chapters to over 350 cities and keeping the dream of progressive communities in all 50 states alive.

This year, we need your help to keep that dream alive. Donate today to keep aggressive activists meeting nationwide.

We are joining in this fundraising effort with a vital partner in the progressive netroots, Open Left. Open Left has been a progressive media powerhouse for the last three critical years in our movement. Just as we have changed the landscape of modern politics by building a network of aggressive activists, they have done so through efforts like getting every 2008 Senate Democratic challenger to come out in support of net neutrality. With both organizations facing a budget shortfall in the upcoming year, we've partnered to ask that you support the effort to build a progressive counterpoint to the tea parties and Fox News.

Contribute now to support progressive infrastructure like Living Liberally and Open Left.

Wilma Stephenson and Rachael Ray

Philly high school teacher Wilma Stephenson is what you might call a benevolent bully. Pressure Cooker, a just-out-on-DVD documentary about Stephenson's "culinary boot camp," gets some laughs from her drill sergeant-style tactics.

But there's nothing funny about all the obstacles facing her inner-city students in their efforts to win scholarships to the country's best culinary academies. Having a mentor like Stephenson to goad and guide them gives her kids opportunities that would more likely pass them by were it not for her passion and dedication.

Seeing Pressure Cooker made me fall in love with Wilma Stephenson, and Rachael Ray did, too.

Ray was so impressed by Stephenson's success rate with her students that she enlisted the resources of her non-profit Yum-O! and the Rachael Ray Show to honor Stephenson for her extraordinary devotion to her students.

So, on Monday, May 3rd, the Rachael Ray Show will air an episode entitled "Room 325," which will introduce the tender-hearted terror of Frakford High to the rest of America. By a happy coincidence, Eating Liberally is hosting a screening of Pressure Cooker here in NYC on the same evening. Please come if you're in our neck of the woods, and if you're not, get a copy of the DVD--you'll see why Rachael Ray wanted to go and meet Stephenson for herself!

I asked Ray to tell me a little more about why she chose to feature Stephenson, and she kindly took time out to answer my questions via email:

Kerry Treuman: You snuck into culinary teacher Wilma Stephenson's Philadelphia high school over spring break like some kind of Secret Santa, and gave her kitchen and classroom a total makeover with state-of-the-art equipment. What inspired you to do this?

Rachael Ray: Wilma inspired us to do this! This is one of the few culinary programs left in public schools and they are so important. I was interested in Wilma's program as a whole because not only is she teaching kids values and a vocation, but she is also a mother figure and a mentor to her students. You have to celebrate someone like that!

In a school where 40% of the students don't graduate, 100% of Wilma's students graduate with the ability to get a decent job in the food service industry if they don't pursue college. That's amazing!

KT: You've never made any bones about the fact that you had no formal culinary training yourself (and it doesn't seem to have, um, held you back, exactly.) But in addition to giving Wilma an "extreme kitchen-classroom makeover," you awarded each of her 10 graduating seniors a $5,000 scholarship. What do you hope this will do for them?

RR: These kids have so much stacked against them that the scholarships are a small gesture. They are an ingredient dropped in the recipes of the next step in their lives!

KT: Michelle Obama is inspiring millions of Americans to get off the sofa, bag the chips, get digging, get cooking, and get healthy. As one of America's best-known celebrity chefs, you have an incredible platform from which to help her rally the troops.

Clearly, you're stepping up to the plate. So I'm gonna pitch you a softball--do you have a strategy to help the First Lady hit this campaign out of the park?

RR: Healthy eating has to be a conversation. My approach to getting families to eat healthy is multi-pronged -- I believe everyone must become an activist in their community around the concept of good health and nutrition. In order to achieve substantial changes, you need to take baby steps.

People want food that is familiar to them. It's very hard to ask families to stop eating burgers, fries and macaroni and cheese all together, but you can arm them with information in order to do so in a slightly healthier way. Making simple changes in peoples meal routines, such as switching out white bread for whole wheat bread and white pasta for whole grain pasta. Whole grain pasta alone is a great source of protein and fiber.

Another example is instead of making regular mashed potatoes, you can make mashed sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are the number one most nutritious vegetable in the produce department -- and they are delicious! Small steps can add up to big changes in the overall health of an entire family.

It's also very important to give your kids ownership of the food they eat! Let them get involved in the process. Whether it's in your yard or in your windowsill, introduce growing fresh vegetables to them. By helping grow what they eat, kids know where food comes from and they can choose to eat what they watched grow.