Seattle-based Michael Hebb is one of the most interesting characters I’ve met in the course of my wanderings among the ranks of the sustainable food movement. He’s obsessed with the table as cultural and political space — a place where food is shared, friendships form, ideas incubate and mutate and spread, etc. For Hebb, the decline of convivial eating marks a devastating loss, and not just a strictly culinary one; reviving it, re-mystifying it, seems to be his task. His project, One Pot, (among other activities) holds regular dinner events featuring everything from conversations with intellectuals like the wonderful playwright/essayist/actor Wallace Shawn to evenings of music — including an upcoming one featuring “a metal band named lesbian.” In the TEDx talk below, Hebb discusses what he calls “table-making” — and, to my surprise, mentions a certain North Carolina farm project of which I am quite familiar:
