4B — Thursday, January 15, 2015 the b-side The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com GIANCARLO BUONOMO “Home is where one starts from. As we grow older / The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated …” -“East Coker,” T.S Eliot I’m nearing the end of a month-long layover. On December 16, I flew from Detroit to Boston. And on the evening of January 21, I’ll board a plane in Boston headed for Rome, to study and eat and file this very column. When my editors approved my proposal to write pieces from Italy, they mentioned I would have a column due before I made my transatlantic journey. “Write something about Boston!” they suggested. A good idea, but harder than one might think. Not that there’s a dearth of word-worthy edibles in Beantown — in fact, it’s the opposite. I could tell you about the perfect fried oysters I ate at B & G last weekend, how the crisp crust contained a nugget of briny, almost molten meat, how they were served in their original shells. I could give you my practiced rant about how the pizza in Boston is actually better than the pizza in New York. I could wax poetic about the sausage sandwiches with peppers and onions that carts sell outside of Fenway Park. But after a few paragraphs of that, I’m sure you’d get tired. When I ran out of adjectives and alliteration, there’d be that dreaded “So what?” Simply describing the food scene of my home city could only hold your attention for so long. Good food writing — good writing of any kind — always starts with a question. Here’s mine: Why did the cold spaghetti I ate out of a tupperware at 2 a.m the other night taste so bad? Sorry, I’ll back up a bit. I’m not really from Boston, you see. I actually hail from a suburb called Concord, whose revolutionary and literary lore you probably learned about in high-school history. I associate my house — cappuccino-colored exterior, just down the road from a farm — with food. I have many happy memories of childhood dishes: tomato sauce, roasted chicken, stuff I ate every week as a kid and By KAREN HUA Daily TV/New Media Editor We were in the depth of Janu- ary freeze, and the barren woods of North Campus were honestly the last place I wanted to be in the dark. With frozen fingers and sweaty palms, I blindly felt my way around Pierpont’s Wi-Fi and service-less basement, searching for this godforsaken “reflection room.” I finally hap- pened upon a reclusive and bleak – but tranquil – room used as an artists’ escape. Jenny walked in just a few minutes later, clearly much more familiar with the space. She made herself at home, and immediately colored the bare walls with an animated energy. As she detailed her passion proj- ect, it was clear her ambitions were lofty, grander than her petite stature suggested she was capable of. I first heard about Jennifer Larson when I attended the Uni- versity’s Lightworks Film Fes- tival this past December, where her trailer won the Best Docu- mentary award. Larson gradu- ated with a degree in Screen Arts and Cultures shortly after the premiere, and now devotes all her time to expanding her docu- mentary trailer into a formidable full-length project. Though film is her principal medium, Larson also has exten- sive photography and graphic design portfolios called “The Larson Lens.” She has worked on dramatic and comedic shorts before, but she considers docu- mentary her forte – pieces that intertwine shots of people in their fields with interview clips from community members. By combining action scenes with poignant commentary, Lar- son aims to bring awareness to inspiring, real-life stories she believes are worth sharing. Growing up in Royal Oak, Larson always had an eclectic array of interests, but she was certain she would make a living out from her creativity. Though she never took any art classes beyond middle school man- dates, she rooted herself in the University’s School of Art and Design. It was at her Sophomore Review at the end of her sec- ond year, that professors saw a different spark in her – a spark they declared bluntly as, “You belong in the film school.” On a shaky whim, she trans- ferred into LSA’s Screen Arts and Cultures program, even though she was taking a risk so late into her college career. Over ARTIST PROFILE VIRGINIA LOZANO/Daily Univeristy alum Jennifer Larson chronicles the Cooley Reuse Project. IN FOOD COLUMN Home is where the hunger is time, she smoothly transitioned from her art background to pro- duction design in film. Soon, she made a larger discovery in her new field. “I very much enjoy doing the artistic side of things, but my passion is still with documen- taries … I’m very committed to sharing stories and messages, especially ones that aren’t given enough attention by the media,” Larson said. Appropriately, her current passion project is to film the progress of the Cooley Reuse Project in Detroit – an endeavor set to span the course of the next five years. Nicole Pitts, the project’s creator, stumbled upon Cooley High School – a magnificent building of Spanish-Renais- sance exterior and terribly dilapidated interior – acciden- tally. In 2010, the school was unfortunately closed due to lack of sufficient enrollment and budget. It is now Pitts’ mission to raise the funding to purchase the property – then fully revive and remodel it as a community center, which will include job training services, gym facilities, mixed-income residential housing and other resources for the Detroit com- munity. CRP is primarily Nicole Pitts’s project, but it is Larson’s job is to follow and document the process and progress. Her connection with Pitts traces back to her early adolescence, as Larson’s mother and Pitts are colleagues at Oakland Com- munity College. Larson and Pitts have known each other for about 10 years, and just last year, Larson latched her own project onto Pitts’s. As Larson puts it, “(the CRP is) going to help rebuild the community, bring more power to it, give more opportunities to people in that area who don’t feel like they have anyone to reach out to. They don’t know where to go to get on their feet – to be more successful.” As a filmmaker who cares deeply about Detroit, Larson knows there is a whole city of unique options she can high- light on film. However, what initially attracted her to CRP was not only Nicole Pitts’s cha- risma, but a proud sense of duty. Larson explained, “I feel like (Detroit’s) my home. It’s an underdog city that is por- trayed in a grossly negative light … The particular stories I want to tell are the ones that I think will have a positive influ- ence … Nicole Pitts and her Cooley Reuse Project are defi- nitely something that should be known at least by the people of the Detroit and Michigan area.” It’s this dedication to her passion and her personal proj- ect that is tremendously inspir- ing. Larson plans on releasing the documentary in three sepa- rate 30-minute segments: the pre-development, the purchase of the property and finally the completion’s effect on the com- munity. As advised by one of her SAC professors, she intends to package her completed film on Seed and Spark, an online forum for independent film- makers to share their passion projects. Larson has since become an integral CRP member, as well. She has thus far used her per- sonal funds and equipment to fuel her own project – without even a Kickstarter campaign to buttress her financially. The scope of the project is a hefty one – one most fresh post-grads and budding filmmakers would not immediately commit to. “(My film) shows the people in Detroit … coming together to make something better for themselves, to benefit further generations – and to help bring back the phoenix rising from the ashes,” she says. Larson’s upcoming mis- sion is a trailer event to bring a swarm of support out to vol- unteer on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this year, where she and Pitts hope to clean the outside of Cooley High School to make it safer even before it opens to the public. Slowly but surely, she will aid in making the revival of Cooley High and the completion on her film both a reality. “Apathy is a huge problem in our youth and in our soci- ety today,” she said. “One of my goals as a filmmaker is to make my spectators active… I’m hoping that something they take away will be a spark … something that drives them to … make a change, to be more involved in their community.” Even in her language, it is clear artistic thought runs through her every nerve – and empathy is a quality so genuine to her character. Larson holds up her coffee cup to help visu- ally demonstrate a metaphor. “Say my coffee cup is a soda can … and you try to open it and the tab pops off … Something is only as strong as its weak- est point,” she explained. “The weakest point would be Detroit and this situation in America, and … it’s important for – even if you’re in California or New Mexico or Arizona or wher- ever – you should care about Detroit.” “I’m hoping that something they take away will be a spark.” still do now. I liked the leftovers even better; there was always something sinfully illicit about heating them up late at night. Much of modern gastronomy is, paradoxically, sentimental. Great chefs — even ones who use liquid nitrogen and make foams — often create dishes that reheat long-frozen memories. Thomas Keller, whose French Laundry was once named the best restaurant in the country, used to make miniature grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato- water soup. David Chang’s Momofuku Ko (two Michelin stars) serves fried apple pies with miso butterscotch for dessert, a refined version of the McDonald’s classic. Countless other chefs dish out these Proustian moments, and there is no shortage of customers eager to experience them. I assumed, then, that chowing down on my cold spaghetti would be full of delicious nostalgia. When the sweet sauce, thickly caked on the spaghetti, hit my palate, it would fire some well- seasoned neurons and flood me with halcyon feelings. I would be 14 again, having a snack before a long Friday-night sleep. But therein lies the problem. It’s probably fun for a 40 year old to be reminded of their favorite food when they were 14. At 20, in that anxious layover between adolescence and adulthood, it wasn’t fun to feel like a teenager again. Why? Because that spaghetti tasted so simple, so comfortable, so easy. In a forkful of pasta I had regressed, and saw how easy it could be to do that over and over and over. Maybe I was alone in this feeling. I associate my house — my whole childhood — so strongly with food, but then again, my parents spent a large amount of time and money cooking and shopping and eating with my siblings and me. Did others have such good memories of eating at home? I made a simple survey, and sent it out to scores of friends, asking if the food at home or at school was better. I checked a day later, and 83 percent of them had chosen “home.” Students like myself are in a bit of a half-sour pickle. Most of us hope when we leave for college we’ll transition from the kid version of everything to the adult version. Sleepovers with a pilfered 12-pack will be replaced by keggers. A rigid curriculum will be replaced by classes you’re actually interested in. Singles are finally stretched into home runs. It’s rare that I meet a college student who misses high school. And yet, most of us miss the food of our childhoods, and aren’t that excited about “eating like adults.” At an age when many of us so desperately want to, and often need to, forget the practices of our youth, food is the one thing that we often don’t want to change. But because food is so infused with the essence of childhood, the simple act of eating can bring many of us to a state that we struggle to move out of. The other night, I was roasting a chicken with some garlic and herbs. I remember being small and getting on my tippy-toes to place my nose near the oven, to breathe in the wonderful, exciting aroma of ingredients transforming into a meal. This night, I hunched over and inhaled the fumes, like the oracles of Ancient Greece, hoping they would tell me something. My chicken needed to cook longer. Buonomo is still waiting for his chicken. To help him pass the time, email gbuonomo@umich.edu. THE D’ART BOARD Each week we take shots at the biggest developments in the entertainment world. Here’s what hit (and missed) this week. Design by Gaby Vasquez Jenny From the Bra Jennifer Lopez enjoys nip-slip at Golden Globes. I’ll Take You to Neverland Allison Williams receives analingus in season premiere of “Girls”. Destiny’s Child Instagram pic instigates Beyoncé pregnancy rumors. Good Weed, Bad Bitch 2 Chainz owns Nancy Grace in debate on marijuana legalization. Zoey 911 Fucking badass Jamie Lynn Spears uses knife to break up Pita Pit brawl.