Throughstone #14: When the Error is the Correct Answer

“Whatcha lookin’ for?” the convenience store clerk queried, already knowing.

“Just a beer after a long day,” I replied, realizing I’d fallen back in time.

“Sorry, sir – it’s a dry county.” I felt a sudden case of 40-year whiplash. 

I’d just landed in Little Rock and had grabbed a hotel room in Conway, on my way to give a keynote for the Northwest Arkansas Local Food Conference. I simply wanted to sip a beer while scrolling through the day’s emails, so I found an open bar and started scrolling through an unexpected flood of messages from friends, telling me I’d been hacked, apparently on my layover at BWI. 

My friend Laura of The Lexicon had Salus naturae suprema lex embedded in her signature, so I looked it up to confirm that my translation of “The health of nature is the supreme law” was correct. However, AI kicked in, uninvited, and auto-corrected with Sales populi supreme lex esto.

That was it – the missing piece of the puzzle! I’ve been trying to succinctly articulate the idea of “Foodshed as New Democracy” since 2013, never nailing it to my satisfaction. Rebuilding our foodsheds feels inherently democratic, but is it actually a form of democracy? 

Having watched local citizens around the globe center their advocacy on healthy food systems, I could feel democracy at work but had failed to summarize it. Turns out, 100 miles away, this motto was even on the Missouri state seal:

“The health of the people is the supreme law.”